Another intense day of searching for and remembering the hundreds of thousands of soldiers lost to the war. Since I've been using a British guide to the Western Front, I'm not going as far south as where the American offensive helped turn the tide of the war in 1917. There's so much to see and do in the north quarter.
Poperinge finished with visits to the War Horse Memorial. The statue is unavoidable, in a major intersection's round-a-bout, with poppies and lupine planted all around. Here's a picture.
At the Essex Farm Cemetery, I saw the bunkers where Lt. John McCrae tended to the wounded and wrote "In Flanders Field." Here's the bunkers, beautifully preserved between a drainage ditch and the Ijzer Canal.
The tall Essex Farm Memorial obelisk is for the Commonwealth's West Riding Division, and was installed by the division's commander in 1920. It has a very pregnant tiger guarding its steps, who loves to be pet, but don't touch her tummy! Cats are beloved pets in Belgium.
Other notes: whenever a Commonwealth cemetery has at least 40 graves, it has a cross to mark it. If a battlefield burial had fewer than 40 graves, those men were moved to the larger cemeteries. If it has a Stone of Remembrance, the cemetery has over 1000 graves. Essex Farm had both.
The Yorkshire Trenches were in a commercial zone with a Biomass recycling station. If you could stand the stench, you could find an awesome excavated trench site. It was found in 1992 when they were building, and an enthusiastic batch of amateurs mapped and dug out the trench.
As you can see by the following list, I did way too much today. Emotionally exhausting to see the Brooding Soldier at Vancouver Corner/Canadian Park, Tyne Cot Cemetery in Zenebeke/Passendale (largest Commonwealth Cemetery in the world with over 12,000 plots and 35,000 names on the wall), then the Passchendale Experience museum, and many other sites. More tomorrow.
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