We met up at St Pancras to catch the Eurostar to Lille in France, where we jumped on a bus and went over the border to Belgium. The weekend was going to be pretty busy, and as it was almost midnight when we arrived at the hostel in Messines, we decided against going to the pub with the rest of the tour group. We had to be up at 5am the next morning, and it wasn't something that we wanted to be exhausted for.
5am came waaaaay too early, but we were up and showering before the wake up door knocking commenced anyway. Our first item on the itinerary was the dawn service at Buttes Polygon Wood. This was the first time that they had held a dawn service for Anzac Day, and the first time that any of us had been somewhere so significant for it. Polygon Wood was the scene for a large part of the Battle of Passchendaele in World War 1. It was captured by the Australians in 1917, and was part of the push for Ypres and the Menin Road. The service was amazing. There wasn't a dry eye around, even from the boys who'd been out at the pub probably until we were just getting up. It was eerie as well. We were standing with our backs to a mass of identical white headstones, facing the butte itself with the memorial for the 5th Australian Division, who had captured the area. The cemetery is surrounded by the woods, which had been wiped out by the time the Australians arrived during the war. It was basically an area of mud and trenches at that time. There was very little sound, certainly no traffic, and the bugle sent shivers down our spines as it played the Last Post and Reveille.
We had time for a little wander around, but fairly quickly headed back to the bus after the service had finished. We made our way to the war museum in Zonnebeke. The tour had two buses - one for the Aussies and one for the Kiwis. We had been together for the dawn service and were staying with them for a few other things that morning, before splitting up and going to visit places that were slightly more personal for each country. We were at the museum because they were opening a new exhibit that day, a sculpture from a New Zealand artist. The mayor of the town spoke (not that we could really hear what he was saying), and then we took a tour through the museum. It even has trenches recreated underneath.
After the museum we wandered across the road, to have breakfast with the Australian Ambassador to Belgium and the head of the Australian Army in Western Europe. They were there to mark the first Anzac services being held in the region, and so met up with us for a few of the events. When breakfast was over we jumped on the bus and went to Tyne Cot, the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world.This is a place that I don't think I'll ever forget. There are 12 000 graves there, and only about 3000 of them actually have identified bodies in them. It's literally a sea of graves, most of which you don't even see until you're halfway through the cemetery. We had very little time to look around when we first came in, as we were there for another service. It was different from the first one, in that this time it was daylight, and whilst the cemetery was still important in Australian history, it wasn't quite the same as Polygon Wood.
After this service had ended, we had a few minutes to look around, but then it was straight back on the bus. We were part of the official convoy, with the ambassador and Army guy, going to Ypres and then marching through the town up to the Menin Gate for another service. The Menin Gate is where the names of the missing soldiers from each of the allied forces during World War 1 are listed. There are nearly 55 000 names in total. There was another service there once we arrived, and again the bugle playing sent shivers up my spine.
We had the opportunity to go to a talk after the service there, but decided it was time to take a break and have some lunch. We wandered around Ypres, and eventually found a cafe. Before we settled down though, we did check out a few chocolate shops, and made plans to go back. The chocolate shops are unreal - they're so keen for your business that they offer free samples and gifts with purchases.After lunch we boarded the bus back to Zonnebeke, as we were going to walk the Road to Passchendaele. This road, or path as it now is, is the route that the allied forces, including the Anzac corps, fought to gain control of during one of the final pushes of the war. It's a couple of miles in length, ending at Tyne Cot. Along the way are bunkers, with their sandbags intact, the remains of a railyway line where a soldier was discovered and identified a couple of years ago, and the remains of other trenches and bunkers spread out across various fields. It's interesting to see all of them still there. It's not as if they need reminders of what went on, there are plenty of cemeteries for that. And yet people have chosen to leave them in place, and open for tourists to come and look at.
This time we spent a lot more time at Tyne Cot. Our guide, Mark (most knowledgable guy EVER), took us through the cemetery and told us a few of the stories of particular graves and soldiers. There are 4 graves there belonging to Germans, which seems odd given the history of the area. However, they were discovered there during the clean up operation at the end of the war, and in the end they were left where they were found. The memorial that runs along the top entrance of the cemetery had a message on it that says something along the lines of 'we were enemies in war, now we will look after each other as friends'. It truly is awful to think of how many families never had a body to bury, and how many of those bodies never had a family to mourn them at their final resting place.
Eventually we made our way back to Ypres for dinner and for the 8pm playing of the Last Post. Every single night since the 2nd of July, 1928, the Last Post has been played there as a mark of respect. It was halted briefly during German occupation in World War 2, but it was played every night in England to compensate. The first night of freedom after the town had been occupied saw the service resume. We watched the service, had dinner, bought some chocolate and headed back to the bus to go back to our accommodation in Messines.
That night we decided that, despite being seriously shattered, we'd go up to the town and go to the pub. Never have I been in a situation which has seen me so seriously outnumbered by Kiwis, to the point that we were embarrassed. We were out-drunk and out-sung, but as a matter of principle, we made damn sure we were the last ones in the bar! I think it was about 3am before we left, and even then I had to drag the others out of a different bar on the way back to the hostel. They had decided they weren't finished drinking yet, but we walked in, were glared at by some unfriendly looking people, and I literally dragged them back out and home. It had been an amazing day, and such a long day, but we had another one to go before we went back to England.
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