Remembrance Day – Every Day!

Menin Gate, Ypres (Ieper) Belgium
Photo copyright Melanie Wills

We take a few minutes every November 11 to be mindful of and thank those who endured and sacrificed so much during the wars.  But every evening the people of Ypres (Ieper) commemorate those who died in the liberation of Belgium during the Great War of 1914-1918. In a city lovingly rebuilt from rubble to resemble its former medieval splendour, a ceremony is held at the Menin Gate, where 55,000 names of those Allied troops who have no known grave are inscribed. Nearly 7000 of them are Canadians. Aside from a few years during WW2, this moving homage has been taking place every day since 1928! It includes the playing of The Last Post, which you can see in this YouTube video. If you have 8 minutes, watch this lovely short film as well. For more information about the Menin Gate ceremony and its history, visit this website. And if you have a chance, do go there and experience it yourself. My family and I will never forget our trip to Ypres!

You might also be interested in my WW1 website – Odd, Intriguing, Surprising Facts about WW1 - which is being used by educators and researchers worldwide.

Deadly Aftermath

It’s been 93 years since the last of the many millions of shells was fired in the Great War, but every year, farmers in France and Belgium still find dangerous munitions on their land. In Flanders fields alone, some 10,000 unexploded bombs are ploughed up each year. It’s known as the “Iron Harvest”, and farmers place their finds by the roadside for the bomb disposal units to collect. Ironically, people are still being killed by WW1 munitions. Canada’s Vimy Memorial apparently has one unexploded shell for every square metre, which is why there are fences and signs warning people not to stray off the paths.

So imagine how hazardous the devastated landscape was immediately after the war. That’s why I was surprised to discover that Michelin published tourist guides to the battlefields and cemeteries! I just read one about Ypres that was published in 1920. Illustrated with pictures of piles of rubble where villages had once stood, muddy, debris-ridden fields with water-filled shell-holes, and rough roads lined with naked, broken tree stumps, it gives detailed directions on what to see and how to get about. Some roads were not yet passable. Here’s a quote: “Beyond the cross-roads there is a confused heap of rails and broken trucks in the middle of shell-torn ground.”

It seems macabre to me to tour the battlefields when they are still raw, highly dangerous, and gruesome, as dead bodies were being discovered and recovered. Having said that, my own tour of them and the military cemeteries a few years ago was a powerful and moving experience.

The magnificent, medieval city of Ypres was virtually razed, as you can see in the 1919 photo above. Are the people standing there tourists, or citizens returning and trying to imagine rebuilding their homes and lives? Fortunately, they did, as you can see in this photo taken by my daughter.

Photo copyright Melanie Wills

Remembrance Day

I mentioned in a previous blog that the people of Ypres (Ieper ) Belgium have, since 1928, held a nightly ceremony at the Menin Gate to commemorate the fallen of WW1. Once a year, on Nov. 11 at 11:00 am, we stop for two minutes to remember those mostly very young men and women who innocently, patriotically went off to “do their duty” for King and country, one in ten never to return, and all the other soldiers in other conflicts, some still ongoing. Those who haven’t seen Terry Kelly’s poignant music video about the real meaning of those two minutes of homage should have a look at “A Pittance of Time”.

Through my novels, I’ve been told that I’ve contributed to a deeper understanding of the “war to end all wars”. My books are not war novels, per se, but are about the people caught up in the cataclysm - young men who become aviators, soldiers, front-line medics, and their wives, sweethearts, sisters who endure their own hardships as ambulance drivers and nurses, as well as those anxiously waiting on the home front, who also made enormous contributions. It is by seeing the war through the eyes of individuals that we can truly understand the life-altering consequences of that tumultuous time. As one of my fans recently commented: “I attended the War Museum in Ottawa and with your characters in mind, I could see Chas flying high in his plane! Attaching a soul to the stories and pictures we looked at brought a whole new human meaning to me. It was no longer something we learned about once in school - it had a face, a life, a love, and a tragedy.”

The photo above was taken at the impressive Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge, France.

In Flanders Fields

We visited Ypres (now Iper) in Belgium a few years ago when I was doing research on book 1 of The Muskoka Novels, The Summer Before The Storm, set during WW1. The first thing that struck me, besides the fact that the city had been beautifully restored from the rubble of war, was that John McCrae’s famous poem, “In Flanders Fields” was plastered everywhere about the town, even in our Novotel lobby. The WW1 museum, housed in the rebuilt Cloth Hall, is called “In Flanders Fields”. How surprised I was when I boasted to the owner of the English bookstore that I came from John McCrae’s hometown, only to have him casually reply, “Oh, you’re from Guelph, Ontario.”

I know that the small museum in Guelph honouring John McCrae regularly has visitors from Europe, so their respect for this famous doctor-poet is more than lip service for tourists.

The Belgians still pay homage to all the fallen. Every evening at sunset, the people of Iper commemorate those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the liberation of Belgium. A parade leads to the Menin Gate where 55,000 names of those Allied troops who have no known grave - nearly 7000 Canadians among them - are inscribed. The moving ceremony includes the playing of The Last Post. Aside from a few years during WW2, this has been taking place every evening since 1928! Would that we all gave even a modicum of this kind of tribute to the men who, as poet Rupert Brooke so aptly said, “poured out the red sweet wine of youth”.

You know you're a fan when....

... you go on a literary pilgrimage on your honeymoon! We hiked the Bronte Moors, explored Thomas Hardy's Wessex and Daphne du Maurier's Cornwall, which is still one of my favourite places. In 1995 I had hoped to meet James Herriot at his surgery - for he met with fans weekly - but he died just a couple of months before our trip. His Yorkshire Dales are every bit as beautiful and enchanting as he had described in his novels, and as portrayed in the popular TV series," All Creatures Great and Small". 

A bit of a twist on this is that I was also thrilled to visit the locations in France and Belgium where my Muskoka Novels take place during WW1. Walking through the enormous cemeteries, standing on the impressive Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge, and hearing the haunting Last Post at the Menin Gate in Ypres (now Iper) brought my own novels more to life for me.