Ypres Salient Part 2.2

Nighttime June 10 - 

James Robertson, VC

Behold How Good and How Pleasant

It is for brethren to dwell

Together in unity (Mother)

Upon driving through the Menin Gate, and seeing how incredibly massive it was, I realized 55,000 names require a great deal of real estate.  Will told us at Tyne Cot that the CWGC is committed to maintaining the name slabs so they are always legible, which means each slab is replaced a minimum of every ten years.  The brand new ones looked amazing.  Tyne Cot was constructed from black flint from the Midlands and Portland stone from the U.K., which were shipped over the channel.  The Menin Gate has the same stone, but uses bricks instead of flint. At 8:00 p.m., 365 days a year, the Last Post is played by 3-5 cornet players in swanky uniforms.  For our night, a band had applied to play as well, so we were treated to Last Post with horns, a bagpiper playing the Scottish song , and a small band of 20 playing two songs while guests placed wreaths at the transom.  Several wreaths were laid on Sunday, and a nearby Brit, who retired in Belgium, said it was an unusually long ceremony.  Very moving and beautiful, despite this same Brit/Belgian confronting a drunk local about being respectful.  We know how to run from a fight!  My pics aren't very clear, but do go online and look it up.  Beauteous.  

Here's Tyne Cot flint and Portland Stone.

Our Hotel Ambrosia is run by Vincent and his family.  He’s been at it for 11 years, and feels the strong traffic to his hotel will continue after the end of the 14-18 WW1 Centenary.  He asked us why we were there, as few Americans go to Ypres.  We explained our pilgrimage, and he was very helpful.

He couldn't wait to hear about our thoughts about the In Flanders Fields museum, by far the most high tech museum I've visited.  Here's a picture of Audrey looking at old chemical weapons canisters from Germany.  Yellow means mustard gas, blue means chlorine.  You get the idea.

This museum needs its own post, so au revoir!