2:28pm Monday 4th February 2008
By Tim Quantrill
I’ve just got back from a holiday that managed to combine most of my passions - good beer, travel, family history and a bit of birdwatching. You don’t get much better than that. All I
needed was warm weather and it would have been perfect!
I went to the fields of Flanders along the France/Belgium border with my father and brother to visit the grave of my great uncle on the 90th anniversary of his death in World War I.
To walk the battlefield where he died was very poignant and researching the activities of the Battalion his Royal Engineers company was attached to proved a humbling experience when casualties from
enemy shellfire or snipers were a daily occurrence amid the mud and horror of the front line. When you look at film of what the men in the trenches had to overcome, problems we might face today pale
into insignificance.
The trenches in the area he died in are all now arable fields with no sign of the carnage that took place there apart from exploded munitions and personal artefacts that are still turned up by the
plough. The villages around look like any other French village but most had to be rebuilt from the rubble that was all that was left in 1918.
We stayed in hotels in Arras and Ypres amid beautiful medieval squares and streets that again were laid waste by years of bombardment. These historical town centres were reconstructed how they used
to look. How much better lots of cities in Britain would look if we had done the same after the bombing raids of World War II instead of submitting to their further despoilation with concrete.
Then when you see endless rows of graves in numerous cemeteries in the area and the lists of thousands of names on the Menin Gate in Ypres, it brings it home how much my great uncle’s
generation and the countries involved sacrificed in terms of men and materiel - Britain for instance counted about a million deaths, many times that were injured and from being the world’s
superpower, we slipped behind the US, sacrificing gold and commercial interests in America for a song in order to pay for the conflict. In fact, we still have billion of pounds worth of loans
outstanding and seemingly never to be repaid.
On our visit, the rain turned the fields around Croisilles to a muddy morass that would have been familiar to the soldiers who fought and died there and perhaps it was appropriate that we visited the
area on such a day as the atmosphere was heightened by the gloomy skies overhead.
Cheered and warmed by the fantastic Belgian beers we tried in Ypres, we reflected on what we had learned and how glad we were to keep alive our antecedent’s memory and make sure he is not
forgotten.
Green or Obscene - the mileage counter
Miles by car: -805
Miles being driven: -542
Miles by train: +600
Miles on foot: +124
Miles by bike: +0
Miles by bus: +0
Miles by ferry: +250
Total: -373 (running total: -1575)
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/trade_directory/