- Thread starter
- #21
DerAdlerIstGelandet
Just make the next holiday long enough, so you can visit me. It's not far from my home 
Ypres
- Thread starter Marcel
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DerAdlerIstGelandet
Just make the next holiday long enough, so you can visit me. It's not far from my home 
Hard to do. This is the USA my friend. A country that has been conditioned to believe that working to live (rather than living to work), and having a decent work-life balance with decent vacation time is evil.
What lil vacation time I get, I use for family.
- Thread starter
- #23
Of course and so you should
Yes, definitely Marcel. I've got only one night there and we'll be watching the Last Post, but I'm sure I could find time for a beer with you. It'll be good to catch up again. The date I'm likely to be there is between the 20th and 22nd of June. Not sure which day exactly I'll be in Wipers.
parsifal
Colonel
There is something unmentionably sad about most WWI battlefields. Its the terrible losses that one cant help feeling were all in vain, given what happened after the fighting stopped.
Thorlifter
Captain
I enjoyed Ypres while I was in Belgium but didn't get to spend much time there. Some day I'll get back again. Thanks for the pics Marcel.
WWI has certainly been the gift that keeps on giving.
- Thread starter
- #28
Only just noted this remark. Thanks for the compliment, very much appriciated.
Great shots Marcel!
yulzari
Staff Sergeant
Thank you for these. My grandfather fought there with the BEF in 1914/15 and my father in 1940.
The thing I found about having visited these exact places was how difficult it was to put them into context. Of course, we are told that these ditches in the ground are German trenches, the problem is there appears nothing to place them as the images from the Great War offer no connection at all owing to the mud and lack of identifiable landmarks. I spent a day driving round the Somme area tracing the movement of New Zealand troops and it was only when we reached Le Quesnoy that there was something tangible and identifiable from images and paintings. The same with the Ypres region. Messines was captured by the New Zealanders, but it was just rubble, the entire town. Now it's modern and new, in fact, almost all the lovely old towns in that region of Belgium are less than 100 years old because they were simply wiped from the map and only their names remained.