Ypres - 3 years and 4 major offensives

Spent the day touring the Ypres salient with Darranda. More on her trench and bunker experiences in another post. The fighting around Ypres was long and bloody. There were at four major offensive actions during the war but there was almost continuous fighting in the salient over that time. Ypres was destroyed. The subsequent rebuilding is an astonishing transformation.

This is the cathedral shot from the top of the even bigger and grander Cloth Hall! The people of Ypres know where the money came from. Both buildings were completely destroyed in the war as Ypres was effectively in the front line for long range shelling for years.

These are Canadian troops passing by the ruined Cloth Hall. Clearly there is no Cathedral there either!

The fighting was made especially terrible by the low lying nature of the land and it's tendency to flood. The battlefields were often more like swamps. Over 54.000 names are recorded as 'missing' on the imposing Menin Gate in Ypres as a reminder of the terrible fate that awaited many who served on that front.

The Menin Gate - from the Cloth Hall tower. At 8pm every evening a very simple but moving ceremony takes place. Local volunteer buglers play the Last Post. This has happened every night since the memorial was officially opened in 1927.

Apologies for quality of the shot - very crowded on May 18th - multiple wreath laying at the Gate.

You can click through on the various Ypres battles on Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ypres_(disambiguation)

There were all kinds on horrible firsts in this sector - Gas was used for example, Flamethrowers were also introduced to the world.

More on Ypres today and tomorrow.