Day 8, Wednesday 21/3:

We had a somewhat ambitious itinerary planned for today, to visit a number of WWI sites, situated around Ypres in Belgium. Our first stop was the recently completed Pheasant Wood Cemetery, constructed using Australian funds. This is where the mainly Australian soldiers, discovered in German mass graves in the nearby Pheasant Wood, are now buried. The gravestones of the identified soldiers often contain moving messages from surviving family members. 

After we had finished reading these, I found that there was a geocache hidden in Pheasant wood itself, so Patsy and I set out to explore the woods and find the cache. We next headed to the Australian Memorial Park, located on what was the Australian front line. The poignant ‘Cobbers Statue’ depicts a high-ranking soldier carrying a lower ranking soldier over his shoulder, displaying the comradeship that was felt across ranks through this trench warfare. 

During this period, one method of obliterating the opposing side was to use 100kg bombs, set to detonate 6m below the ground, leaving gaping holes in the countryside. Our next destination was one example of these craters, now making the aptly named Peace Pond. Across the road is the Lone Tree Cemetery, the smallest of the Commonwealth war graves, another very pleasant cemetery. One not too pleasant aspect, however, was the somewhat aggressive dog whose field we had to walk back through – fortunately it knew its bounds and didn’t get within more than a meter. We had our picnic lunch at the Canadian war memorial before visiting the close by Hill 62 Museum. This museum’s main claim to fame is that it has some, if the last, remaining original (or very well faked) trench lines from WW1.

It was very interesting to see these and really get a feel for how it would have been to live and fight in such conditions. However, it must be said that the rest of the museum was very cluttered meaning that it was very difficult to make neither head nor tail of its contents. This was also not helped by the numerous cats and their smell that filled some sections of the museum. The last destination of the day was the Tyne Cot, the largest Commonwealth war graves cemetery in the world, home to some 11,954 soldiers, from many Commonwealth countries, as well as France and Germany. Its extensive back wall lists all 34,959 missing and unknown British and New Zealander soldiers. This vast cemetery just underlines the often stupid and senseless loss of life that occurs as a result of war.