The Last Post - In Flanders Fields

This weekend, hubbie was out of town, so Olivia and myself took advantage of our girls' time to go on weekend with her grandparents to Ieper, which turned out to be a very nice city in the West of Flanders. Beautiful buildings, pleasant atmosphere, nice to walk around and we had the luck to have spring weather joining us.





 We visited the interesting In Flanders Fields Museum. (Visiting the museum with a not-so discrete little girl was an adventure)





 A little history: Since 1928 the "Last Post" has been played every evening at 8 p.m. by buglers of the local Last Post association at the war memorial at Ieper in Belgium known as the Menin Gate , commemorating the British Empire dead at the Battle of Ypres during the First World War. The only exception to this was during the four years of the German occupation of Ypres from 20 May 1940 to 6 September 1944, when the ceremony moved to Brookwood Cemetery in England. On the evening that Polish forces liberated Ypres, the ceremony was resumed at the Menin Gate, in spite of the heavy fighting still going on in other parts of the town.



  I did not think so many people would be there (there were a few hundreds), so when it al began, I thought it was really impressive & moving. It is also incredible that they still do it every night to pay their respect to the fallen soldiers of Ieper.
 Sunday morning, we went for a walk behind the Menin Gate, where it was clear: Spring has come!



The war is still ever-present in the Ypres area. Not only in the landscape, with its hundreds of cemeteries, monuments and relics, but also underground. An example is the Yorkshire Trench & Dug-Out which we visited on Sunday morning too ,some 4 km from Ypres centre.
There you can really see the ugly face of war in the trenches - they found unexploded ammunition, constructions, human remains (more than 250 bodies),...  there.
 
It was a very nice & interesting weekend for the 4 of us !