Day 3 Sat 14th June
Francis Ledwidge Grave
Our first visit today was to the memorial and grave of Irish Poet Francis Ledwidge in Artillery Wood Cemetery, near to the place where he was killed with his crew while repairing a road. Francis Ledwidge 1887 -1917 was born in Slane, County Meath. He was from a poor background and was a great friend of Thomas McDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett. Despite being a Nationalist, he enlisted in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in 1914 and served in Gallipoli and Greece with the 10th Irish Division before being killed on the Western Front in 1917. His group had stopped for a tea break when a German shell landed. A chaplain arriving on the scene soon after wrote: “Ledwidge killed, blown to bits”.
I like Ledwidge’s poetry and had read some of it again the night before. The Welsh Poet Hedd Wynn is also buried at Artillery Wood Cemetery
Langemark German Cemetery
This is a very different cemetery to those we have been visiting the last few days. As in Normandy last year, the German cemeteries seem to be more austere.
Willows grow along the street side like a guard of honour. The sculpture group by Emil Krieger of four mourning soldiers standing with their backs against the wall, at the back of the mass grave is reminiscent of the Grieving Parents statue in Cologne. Looking at it from a distance you can sense the sadness of these men looking at the mass grave and considering the value of life. Around the mass grave containing 25,000 soldiers are blocks with 68 bronze panels bearing the names of more than 17.000 unidentified persons. The names are arranged alphabetically.
On the higher part of the cemetery there are three restored German concrete pill boxes, partly above ground with the entrances facing the German line.
I was particularly taken with the monument at the carpark. 250 blacksmiths from all over the world organised an event for the centenary of WW1 in the Peace City of Ypres. There is a negative/positive single poppy at the top and at the base there are 2016 poppies, with one white poppy symbolising the executed soldiers.
Children from local schools were invited to learn some blacksmith skills and their poppies were incorporated into 2 wreaths.
Tyne Cot Cemetery
Tyne Cot (Tyneside Cottages), situated on the Passchendaele Ridge is the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world. It’s difficult to take in the sheer number of graves – almost 12,000 graves and 35,000 names of soldiers who have no graves on the wall at the back of the cemetery. It’s almost beyond comprehension that there are so many lost lives in one cemetery.
Even the angels mourned – two mourning angels are situated at each end of the wall on pavilions which were actually built over German pillboxes.
Hill 62
This is the ID of the ridge and its height above sea leve as marked on the on ordinance maps of the time. It was an area of heaviest fighting in 1915.
Jacques Schier’s indoor and outdoor museum is amazing. The building houses a Café/Snack bar, bookstall, souvenir shop and viewing cabinets with the most horrific photographs 0f bodies of people and animals, body parts, and all of them in the deep mud that was everywhere, tableaus of medical areas, shelters, etc.
At the back you walk through rusty hardware that is barely held together. (Irish H/S certainly would not allow a walk through!!!) And then to the zig zag maze of trenches, the floors soaked and muddy because of the rain last night, making it easier to imagine the stench of death, the rats, the all-pervading mud and the misery of four years of war.
The reality that this was a war site was clearly illustrated with the live shell that had been found that morning in a nearby field, left at the roadside to be collected and detonated later.
16th Irish Division Memorial, Wytschaete
We stopped for a short time to see the Memorial for the 16th Irish Division next to the Wytschaete Cemetery. The inscription on the memorial reads: “In commemoration of victory at Wytschaete June 7th 1917. In memory of those who fell therein, and of all Irishmen who gave their lives in the Great War.
Hyde Corner Memorial/ Berks Cemetery
It was really interesting to see among the graves here one of a young German Jew. Bet his family never thought of the value that would be on Jewish lives 20 years on. There was an interesting inscription on the grave of J Harris age 20 whose parents had inscribed on the headstone: ”Son of Thomas and Margaret Harris, 306 Blarney Street, Cork, Ireland”. Two underage boys were also buried in this cemetery aged 16 and 17. The inscriptions lend such humanity an pathos to the cemeteries.
Island of Ireland Peace Park
Páirc Síochána d’Oileán na hÉireann le tacaíocht ó mhuintir Messines thóg Iontabhas Aistear an Athmhuintearais an Túr Síochána seo arna thiomnú dóibh siúd uile ó Oileán na hÉireann a throid agus a d’éag sa Chéad Chogadh Domhanda
There is a huge amount of symbolism in the park.
The tower, built in the shape of the traditional Round Tower, is constructed from stones from the Mullingar Workhouse symbolising the suffering poor. At 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month, Remembrance Day, the interior of the tower is illuminated by the sun (Newgrange solstice-like). Funding for the park came from governments north and south of the border symbolising their unity in celebrating the soldiers of the Great War.
Approaching the tower, there are three pillars giving the numbers of those killed, wounded and missing of each division.
36th (Ulster Division): 32,186 10th (Irish) Division: 9,363 16th (Munster) Division 28,398
- There is a Wishing Well inscribed with a peace wish in 24 langauges
- There are 9 talking stones illustrating the words from poems and letters written during the war. Some samles-
Words of Tom Kettle: So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,—
But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed,
And for the secret Scripture of the poor.
Words of Francis Ledwidge: “It is too late now to retrieve a fallen dream, too late to grieve a name unmade, but not too late to thank the Gods for what is great. A keen edged sword, a soldier’s heart is greater than a poet’s art. And greater than a poet’s fame a little grave that has no name.”
Words of William Orpen: I mean
The simple soldier man
Who when the war was first began
Words of David Starrett, 9th Irish Rifles: Just died, done dead
From lumps of lead in mire So the curtain fell,
over that tortured country of unmarked graves
and unburied fragments of men
Murder and massacre
The innocent slaughtered
For the guilty
The poor man
For the sake of the greed of the already rich
The man of no authority
Made the victim of the man
Who had gathered importance
and wished to keep it
Willie Redmond’s Grave and Locre Hospice Cemetery
Among the countless war graves along the Western Front, Willie Redmond’s is accidentally unique, shaped as a cross and standing alone in a field. His comrades are buried nearby, in the small Locre Hospice Cemetery with the more conventional headstones of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
A nationalist firebrand in youth, he mellowed in middle age to support Irish Home Rule within the empire. When in 1914, his brother John called on the movement’s members to enlist as a demonstration of good faith, Willie signed up, although age would have excused him.
Because of who he was, he would have been kept as far away from danger as possible. However, he insisted on being with his men and was soon wounded. A younger man might have survived, but being 56 and out of condition, Redmond died the same day. There is a memorial on by roadside where he was shot portraying the stretcher bearer, Private John Meekes carrying Redmond from the battlefield.
After the war, when the CWGC sought to move the local dead to a centralised cemetery, Redmond’s widow preferred to leave his grave alone, under the care of nuns. It is now a tourist attraction
Before my nightly visit to the Menin Gate, I decided this evening to walk the ramparts.
After visiting the Rampart Cemetery (and seeing the Brent Goose Family) I strolled along the 2km ramparts enjoying the breeze after days of heat, and reading the information panels along the way. There were also some lovely sculptures. I might have missed the really interesting info panels at the Menin Gate but for the walk. A band played at the ceremony this evening (Danny Boy and Abide with Me) as well as the trumpeters and piper. Just as moving as the first night – maybe more as there was no jostle to see – just to be there.
Had dinner with a lovely Kiwi couple this evening. They had just been to Ireland and were delighted to talk about it. Also interested in hearing about the Somme where they would be going tomorrow.
