Ypres Salient 6

It is still 11 June.

I had to continue bushwhacking through the countryside, first finding the old Menin church, which had had a university for centuries.  Then, I found the other piece of the Christmas Truce story in the city square of Menin!   Next to the tourist office is a newer sculpture of a German and a Scots shaking hands over a soccer ball.  

I also learned yet another sad story.  When the Orthodox Church was destroyed in WW1, so was the institution that had been rebuilt there in 1776.  There were no students left to attend.  Gone were the liberal arts classes, oil paintings (the Flemish were first to paint in oils), and the famous lions at the gates.  The beautiful and costly organ was destroyed.  Some say the church tower was targeted for its onion dome shape.  Not many men returned to town to rebuild, but the church of St. Nikolas did reopen, thanks to help from the Australians.  I went inside and lit a candle. A little girl skipped in, dropped her .50 euro piece in the metal box, and lit a candle.  "Will Opa see it?" she asked an older woman in Flemish.  "Huit," she replied.  

It's still light outside at 7:00 p.m.  Wijschate is the next tiny town full of more bodies in cemeteries than residents in homes. Down the road I find one of the few American Monuments, for those who fought in 2017 and helped take back the Messiness Ridge.  

It was near Kriekstraat, which I accidentally drove down.  “Krieg” means war in German, and when I found three small cemeteries in a two kilometer stretch, I inferred "Kriek" means war in Flemish. Really, the area is littered with cemeteries.  You can't drive anywhere without seeing at least one or two.  Maybe it wasn't an accident I found this beautiful little road near the end of my pilgrimage.  I didn't feel lost - I knew exactly what surrounded me.

I thought about the farmers who continue to plow around the little farm cemeteries, and the builders who occasionally find the remains of a soldier during construction.  These are reverently returned to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, who do their best to identify each body, first through archeological means.  They look for dogtags, uniform buttons, weapons or bullets.  They crosscheck the soldiers who are still missing from the area, and often they find them.  In rare instances, they even match DNA, but that's quite expensive.  In the larger cemeteries which list lost soldiers, brand new Addenda slabs are corrected for each new find, and the soldier is given a proper burial ceremony in Tyne Cot or a more local cemetery.  His name will eventually be transferred from the wall of the missing to the ground of the found.  A re-burial occurred just two days ago.  I was sorry to have missed it.  Over 200 tons of unexploded shells are found each year in Belgium. Still.  I am not sorry I missed those, especially since some are filled with chemicals.

Lest We Forget.