National Hiking Day Ypres (2014)
An intensely emotional hike through Flanders Fields

Today I am more of a tourist than a hiker. What else is possible in Ypres, where such an abundance of history surrounds you. I have read up, for the first time followed the trail from that first murder in Belgrade till the silence of the machine guns in 1918. Yesterday I visited the In Flanders Fields museum. Stood underneath the Menen Gate where still every day, every day!, the Reveille and the Last Post are sounded to an audience of war veterans, descendants and many, many tourists. And today I hike. A hundred years after the start of the Great War Belgium holds it’s National Hiking Day in Ypres.

The start is at a school, just outside the city centre. Although it is still early, the first hikers have already set out. I register, glance longingly at a flyer of a new 100 km that I won’t be able hike because of a sporting injury that makes long distances impossible, and set out myself. Along the moat’s water we walk towards a bridge. The first piece of art is located there, an iron cutout silhouette of two children offering a flower to a soldier. It depicts Ypres liberated population’s gratitude. A gratitude I know and share, for in the Netherlands also the American, Canadian, British and Polish liberators are held in high regard. Through a tunnel we cut through the earthen defense wall, which has surrounded Ypres since the Middle Ages. Along the route there are information signs with facts and things worth knowing, but there’s too much text to linger long. We pass by a beautiful wooden house, a reconstruction of a typical wooden house from 1575, which were destroyed in the First World War. At the Rijsel gate we turn right. The gate from the 14e century was one of the most important passages to the front line in the war and is the only city gate that has been preserved. Still the black stones carry tokens of the war: signs pointing out the many cemeteries in the vicinity. I count thirteen. We climb the city’s ramparts and reach the first, Ramparts Cemetery. It’s just a small cemetery and breaths a calm atmosphere. Here you can think of the men as individuals, as human beings and not just as cannon fodder in ill executed maneuvers. The First World War was the first was where killing became industrialized. In the first months of the war soldiers approached the enemy in one single line, bayonets attached to their rifles. It only took a single machine gun to wipe them all out. Warfare changed forever,  something some generals understood too late.

The sun has risen rightly and through the park the restored ramparts are now, we approach Menen gate. It’s a huge structure, impressive with it’s graceful pilasters, white marble and red brick. The walls carry the names of soldiers lost in battle, who lack grave and tombstone. 54.896 names and still the gate is too small. At Passendale there’s a second gate for those who went missing after 16 August 1917. The marble panels with names tower above us and I feel incredibly small. At a few places a paper poppy has been inserted in the seams. Wreaths on a standard are caressed by a gentle breeze. For a small moment I am alone with the dead. No other hikers before or after me. It moves my soul intensely.

Through a narrow street we walk to the Great Market, where the rebuilt Ypres Cloth Hall houses the museum. After the War the Allied wanted to preserve Ypres as a ruin, a monument in honor of all the soldiers killed. The inhabitants disagreed and Ypres was painstakingly rebuilt as they knew it. You would never guess that the buildings surrounding the square are not hundreds of years old, it rivals any beautiful medieval town I ever saw. The Cloth Hall itself is a marvel, a display of the wealth the cloth industry brought Ypres in the 13^th century. Even ships could enter the hall on the now built over river Ypres. On the façade there are plaques remembering the liberators, Polish, Canadian and American soldiers. Besides the impressive building there’s a huge monument for townspeople who have died. The list of people who died in the First World War is long. Beneath it a plaque with names from the Second World War is almost an afterthought. In the Netherlands, neutral during the First World War and occupied by Germans during the Second hardly any monuments for the First World War exist. We cannot truly grasp it’s impact unless we travel outside our borders.

A junction and the shorter distances turn away. I intended to hike 20 km today, for the first time since I decided to really take some rest in December. It’s not going great, but it’s doable. My groin doesn’t hurt anymore and neither does my back, but still something remains amiss. My hip doesn’t turn as it should, it’s tired and weak. We hike towards the railway station and when there’s a rest stop after 3,5 km I really do need it.

After a short rest we walk alongside a stream and reach the edge of Ypres. The 10 and later the 15 km too diverge. And just like that, in the middle of a residential area there’s a cemetery. This too is not very large, but still, because of the uniformity of the tombstones it is very impressive. At the edge of the cemetery 29 tombstones interrupt the rigid pattern and are positioned in a semi circle. They are 29 soldiers from the British Empire who were originally buried in Fusilier Wood Cemetery, which was destroyed in later battles.

Along a busy road we leave Ypres. Ordinarily the traffic noise would annoy me and I would long for the silence of the woods. But today I am here as a tourist, a student. And the road leads me to more knowledge. Another cemetery, row upon row of white tombstone rigidly standing at attention. For the first time I spot a tombstone for someone who was found, but not identified. He too has been laid to rest and lovingly tucked in. Instead of a name his tombstone reads ‘known unto God’ and I wonder about his family, forever unsure of his fate and final resting place. On this cemetery too a monument for John McCrae, the Canadian-British army doctor who moved so many, both in the field and at home, with his poem ‘In Flanders Fields’. Here was the nursing station where McCrae tended hundreds of injured every day and held their hand when they lay dying. A small bunker with a row of narrow chambers remains.

Here the 25 and 30 km curve towards Boezinge, a village with even more history no doubt. For a short spell I am tempted, I do feel pretty good. But no, let’s be sensible just this once. Along the canal I walk back toward Ypres. Somewhere along this canal the Yorkshire Trench is located , a trench system found when a business park was being constructed. None of the routes go there, but I will not leave Ypres until I have seen it.

Just shy of Ypres the shorter distances join us again and through the suburbs we walk towards the other side of town. The next rest stop is at 11 km and I am starting to look forward to it. Before we reach it though, there’s yet another cemetery. How many have we seen already? I have lost count. Too many for sure. At the rest stop I get a soup, as it’s the only way for me to stay still long enough to actually get some rest. But soon enough I’m off again. This part of town is pretty hilly. Just before the village Sint-Jan we leave the streets behind us and trek onto the rural roads. Smack on top of a hill there’s a huge pillar, in remembrance of the 50^th Northumbrian Division. I divert from the route to look at the monument up close and a driver gives me an appreciative thumbs up.

 

When we descend from the hill, we reach another cemetery. But this one is different from the others. Instead of the usual tomb stones, there’s an ocean of low crosses, with half rounded shapes for Islamic and Jewish soldiers in between. I never knew a staggering 30.000 Moroccans fought in Flanders Fields, and not a single monument remembers there contribution specifically. Instead they are hidden among the tombstones in cemeteries scattered all over Belgium. In this one, Saint-Charles-de-Potyze, 4.200 dead are remembered, of which 1.300 remain unidentified. There is no escaping the Great War. A little further on two monuments at the edge of a fallow field. We cross the road en descend to a village where there’s yet another war cemetery. There are so many!

In a sports hall a final rest stop has been set up. From here it’s a measly 3 km to the finish. Ordinarily I would hike the whole 20 km in one go without a rest stop. Now I am glad I can rest my body for a bit and gather energy for the last kilometers. No more cemeteries, please. I am at my limit for today, have no more silent tears to give. Along the sport fields we approach Ypres. Cars are lined up on the shoulders till far outside the city. Hiking crazy Belgians have turned up in droves. And a few even crazier foreigners like me. My hip still bothers me, but I ignore my body. This hike was worth every discomfort. Ypres is a tangible monument to freedom, a permanent tribute to the fallen who have made the greatest sacrifice of all, so that we may live in freedom.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.