Vimy Ridge and the Menin Gate

We left Amiens on Wednesday morning and travelled to Ypres. On the way, we stopped at Vimy Ridge. We joined a tour which took us into the tunnels underneath No Man’s Land. I was surprised at how close the trenches are to each other. We walked along the line of the battle to the memorial which is at its highest point. It was bright white in the sunshine and I felt that it is very dignified and beautiful; it can be seen from miles around. 

We pressed on towards Ypres and stopped at Zonnebeke for lunch, in a café called Koklicoo. We speculated about he meaning of its name, with the front runner being “Silly cow”. However it actually means Poppy! (similar to the French “coquelicot”).

Tynecot was very busy with school parties, which made it even hard for me to imagine the battle there, but its size was sobering, with many of the soldiers unidentified, so written on their gravestones was “Known unto God”. On the memorial wall we found the name of another relative of Heather’s, James Kessack of the Cameronians. 

It was lovely to walk around Ypres in the evening sunshine. We had a drink in the Albertus café before the Menin Gate Ceremony. We were there to lay a wreath to remember our three Scottish soldiers; Hugh Anderson, Neil Chisholm and James Kessack. It was very crowded but we were ushered to a separate (and delightfully central) area with the other “wreath-layers”. At this point Ewan recognised that a person standing just beside us was in fact Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films. I think that he was with his partner, Fran Walsh the screen-writer, and possibly their son. I was suitably amazed, and thanks to Ewan we even knew why he was there this year. Ewan had just been telling us this week that Peter Jackson has recently made a ninety minute film, commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, by colourising footage from the 1st World War. He also employed experts to lip read what the soldiers were saying in the newsreel and arranged for actors to voice what they were saying. I’m really looking forward to watching it. The Last Post was sounded, then Peter Jackson spoke the lines by Binyon,

“They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old ...” which always makes me feel very emotional. There was a minute’s silence and then the wreath laying took place. There were about six small groups, and we were signalled to come forward in turn. The four of us crossed the road side by side, and walked up the short flight of steps to lay our wreath, then we bowed and walked back to our place in single file as instructed. The reveillé sounded and the short dignified ceremony was over.

Dinner was at the cosy Klein Stadthuis right beside the Cloth Hall. My Flemish stew and café gourmand were absolutely delicious.