Poelkapelle

We packed up our little Nissan Note rental car and drove south to a little town about an hour from Brugge, called Poelkapelle. It’s just outside of Ypres, Belgium and was to be another of those moments that are sprinkled throughout our trip. Little did I expect there would be a Tour Guide staying at at the very same Bed and Breakfast. He specializes in War tours and offered a wealth of information which I’ll talk about further in another post. With Gordon’s help I was able to redefine my “must see” list to get the most out of my limited time overseas. As I’ve said before, God planned this trip far better than I could have.

We arrived at the lovely Varlet Farm under bright sunshine. I’d first heard of this B&B from an American gentleman who hosted a website for First World War enthusiasts. He said if I’m going all the way to Belgium and have any interest at all in this era, I should be sure to stay with Charlotte at her Bed and Breakfast.

Varlet Farm has been in Charlotte’s husband’s family for generations. It’s located near what was once the front line and, partly because of that location and partly because of an author Charlotte met years ago who spurred her interest in knowing more about her own farm’s history, she has acquired wonderful knowledge about what happened in the area. She also has a library of books from and about the period, for use by her guests.

Over the years Charlotte’s husband, who still farms the land, has uncovered all sorts of things left from the fierce fighting on the Ypres Salient: half decayed guns, shells, undetonated grenades, helmets, barbed wire spikes, and more. She has many of the items on display in an outbuilding on the property.

These are duckboards that once lined the bottom of the trenches in the hope of offering a buffer between the soldiers and the mud. The tall, twisted wire to the left are barbed wire spikes that held up the barbed wire, the first line of defense that was set up in front of the trenches. Rather than pounding the spikes into the ground, which the enemy would have heard, they were designed to twist into the ground.

These are partially decayed guns and more barbed wire spikes.

This is just a small sample of the shell casings Charlotte’s husband has uncovered on their farmland. Sometimes they still find undetonated grenades, and there is an agency in place today who’s job is to travel the countryside taking care of such dangerous leftovers.

I didn’t ask Charlotte if she’d uncovered any bodies but after learning that’s rather common I took it for granted. She did tell me when human remains are found they do all they can to identify them—from dog tags that might be found with them, parts of a uniform, or knowledge of which regiments fought in that area, etc. It was British tradition to bury soldiers where they fell, and this was near the British HQ in Ypres. Some time after the war, authorities decided to consolidate the innumerable gravesites.
If the graves of less than twenty soldiers were found together, they were moved to a larger “collection” where a war cemetery would be established. If there were more than twenty already buried in one spot, then a war cemetery would remain. As you drive along the country roads of what was once the front line, you’ll spot memorials of all kinds large and small. The number of graves is sobering to say the least, since the estimate of losses for this war alone is somewhere between 10 and 12 million men.

You’ll see British cemeteries, Canadian ones, French and even a couple American ones (the one just above is an American memorial). The French graves have simple stone crosses, the British and American a white, rounded headstone sometimes with the name of the fallen, other times simply: Soldier of the Great War, Known Unto God.

The German cemetery we visited was edged by a bunker that had been in use along the front, and several cement blocks that were also used in German trenches. The gravestones for German soldiers, at least in Belgium, are flat headstones, even with the ground. And although it was as well kept as every other cemetery we visited, it lacked the profusion of flowers found at Allied cemeteries. There were clusters of three stone crosses here and there, and a dark statue solemnly representing the silhouettes of soldiers overlooking their fallen comrades.

We were told many of the Germans who lost their lives in France were buried in communal graves.

The sheer number of graves, coupled with the many memorial walls carved with the names of those whose remains were never found made for a very somber realization of the great loss of life. As I walked some of the pathways I recalled the military parade we’d witnessed for Belgium’s 100th anniversary, and it made me realize that the dead buried all across the front line from the North Sea to Switzerland were just like those healthy young soldiers who marched down Rue de la Loi in Brussels. So sad to have seen what these soldiers would have looked like in the prime of their lives, only to be shot down in such great numbers across Belgium and France.