Wednesday

Wednesday, we woke up at 5:45 to leave for Belgium.  Highbury put out some cold food specifically for us to eat for breakfast and opened the luggage room so that we could all shove our big bags in there.  Thankfully, it is right outside D'Layna and my door so we did not have far to go.  Then, at 6:30am sharp, we all shoved into a sixteen passenger van with sixteen passengers.  Then there was the drive to the train going underneath the English Channel into France.  We all got there early enough that we had a bit of time to go to the restroom at the little store there before we went through.  They only had us pass up our passports for them to look at and only stamped a few of them before passing them back.

Then Mark, our guide, proceeded to drive us in the bus onto the English Channel.  Most of us would have preferred to go over and see the white cliffs of Dover but we didn't.  I tried to pay attention as we drove through France and into Belgium but I was just too tired and eventually fell asleep.  First we visited a German cemetery, Vadslo. 

There are over 25,000 German soldiers buried here.  There can be as many as 10 names on each headstone. 

These two statues are the primary reason why people even go this cemetery.  The Germans don't care for it but volunteers.  And it is so hidden from the road that many don't know what it is when they drive past it.  These statues were done by Kathe Kollwitz.  They are her and her husband.  Her husband is looking at the marker for their son, Peter Kollwitz, while she can't bear to look at it.  She would die during WWII.

We next drove into Ypres and had a small lunch.  It was just tomato soup, little pieces of bread, and water.  Next door, there was a chocolate store that belonged to one of Mark's friends.  He had this special deal going on for those who knew Mark and needless to say, the fifteen students probably spent hundreds of pounds on chocolate for friends and family back home, including themselves.

Then we went to Menin Gate to have a look around and then talk about it before nightfall.

There are almost 55,000 names of soldiers from the British Commonwealth that are inscribed on the wall.  All of them are men who either there bodies were buried and lost, their bodies disintegrated at the blast of a shell, or their body was unidentifiable by the time that they were buried so that, while they may be buried, they do not have a name.

They had a model of the memorial there also for those who were blinded by the war or perhaps blind all together to be able to feel what it looked like.

After that we visited the sight were the bodies of a few miners were.  The tunnel they were digging to place mines below the German lines collapsed on top of them and they were never able to recover their bodies.

This pond right by it is the sight of a shell explosion.  It left such a deep gash in the ground, that if filled in with water  and became a pond.

A nearby farmer used the remnants of the rum jugs from WWI to build his fence.

We next visited a memorial for the Brooding Soldier at the St. Julien memorial for the Canadians.  It was one of the first sights where the Germans used poisoned gas.  Mark's grandfather was actually captured there, which is what probably saved his life and kept him from dying later in the war.

After that, we checked into our inn and dropped off our stuff there before eating our dinner.  As an entree, they served tomato soup again.  Just so everyone is clear, I only like tomato soup when something is dipped in it so that the flavor is so diluted that I can barely taste it.  And this was the fourth time that we had had tomato soup.  I didn't even manage to eat half of my lunch and even less of my entree.  Thankfully, the meal was pretty unlimited so I ate a lot of that.

But the view behind there was gorgeous.  It was on a hill so we had a really good view of Belgium from there.

After that, we went to Menin Gate again for the Last Post.  They have done it about 35,000 times.  But they haven't reached the number of men whose bodies are not known.  They have done it every night since it was made.  It was super cold there so I only got a few pictures because my hands were shaking too badly for any more.

Afterwards, we went back to the inn to have some desert, which was tea and ice cream cones, before having an early night since we were all tired from our early morning.  D'Layna, Ally, and I all shared a room.  Unfortunately, they only put an extra blanket on Ally's and D'Layna's bed so I ended up wearing my hoodie and jeans to bed over my pajamas.