Our Stops Along the Way: Turner's Take #5 Ieper, Belgium

Today, we started off by going to Essex Farm. Essex Farm is the location in which John McCrae wrote the famous poem of remembrance, “In Flanders Fields”. This location held a cemetery, a memorial, and a bunker. Within the bunker at Essex farm is where John McCrae worked as a doctor. During one of the Battles of Ypres he was working on loads of casualties coming in from the front when he saw his friend come in, dead. It became too overwhelming for him so he started to write his famous poem, “In Flanders Fields”. It was really amazing to be standing in the same place in which he wrote his poem.

Our next stop was another cemetery named Tyne Cot. This cemetery was enormous. It was very overwhelming to be standing within 11,956 white gravestones. The majority of the men there died not fifty metres from where they lay. In the cemetery are two pillboxes that were occupied by the Germans. They are responsible for the deaths of so many men. It was a beautiful place but it was also very emotional to think that so many people’s lives were ended so quickly for a small piece of land.

After that we went to the Passchendaele Museum. Here we went into a large museum with lots of cool uniforms, guns, medals, and more. My favourite part was the guns. We walked around the museum until we came to a sign that said “dugout”. After that was a staircase leading below the floor. We traveled down the dimly lit staircase while the lights were flickering and there was noises of distant explosions. Once we got to the bottom, we entered a maze of wooden hallways. It was sooo cool. I felt like I was in WWI. Down the hallways were rooms with manikins in them. One room had a man at his desk, and another had a guy with a doctor and some other people around him, operating on him. After that amazing experience, we exited the tunnel and entered a trench system! The trench was connected but was made differently in some parts because they showed how the French, Germans, and British built their trenches. After running around there, we exited the museum and headed to our final stop.

Our last stop was another museum, that also had a trench system. The museum was lots of WWI guns and stuff but was kinda small. It also looked like it had been pieced together but it was cool overall. The trenches outside, although recreated and a bit sloppy, were very cool. They were like a maze and they seemed real because they were muddy and there was water at the bottom of the trench. All in all, it was an awesome day, once again.