And emo kids

Much of Nasa’s nearly six-tonne Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) will apparently fall apart as it plummets through the atmosphere, burning up just like Homer’s prediction for the comet in the Simpson’s and ultimately prove utterly harmless. Well, not quite it might just disintegrate into 26 hazardous parts weighing in or around 532kg spreading over about 500 miles.

A whole load of people, from NASA to armed forces and security officers around the world will be monitoring the satellite as it makes its reentry sometime between Thursday and Saturday. None know when or where the debris will fall.

This all sounds perfectly deadly except the chances of it hitting you are apparently 1 in 3,200 although when you consider the odds of winning the Euromillions are actually 76 million to 1 seem to make it a virtual certainty that it will kill you and everyone you love. Or maybe it might just hit the vast swathes of ocean and desolate outback strewn across the earth’s surface.

Bless you global warming

Alternatively you could just cower in your bunker like Flanders had planned to do and that worked out fine, right?

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To quote John Buchan’s 1934 biography, Oliver Cromwell, “…stands in the first rank of greatness, as the apostle of liberty, the patron of all free communions, forgetting his attempts to found an established church and his staunch belief in a national discipline. Constitutionalists claim him as one of the pioneers of the parliamentary system, though he had little patience with government by debate, and played havoc with many parliaments. He has been hailed as a soldier-saint, in spite of notable blots on his scutcheon. He has been called a religious genius, but on his religion it is not easy to be dogmatic; like Bunyan’s Much-afraid, when he went through the River none could understand what he said.”

I could go on but what Buchan is trying to say in his somewhat stiff prose, is that Oliver Cromwell was whatever people wanted him to be, which is a skill that only people with a true sense of themselves – whether hesitant or not, as Buchan goes on to describe Cromwell – can muster for the furtherance of their own aims and beliefs – if those aims and beliefs are honest and true – and by so doing enrich the nation. Lincoln, Churchill, and both Roosevelts, had that ability, and in Cromwell they had a perfect teacher.

It is always cited that Oliver Cromwell came from good Puritan stock, stock that relished a life of austerity, hated ceremony – although Cromwell’s own state funeral was one of the grandest ever seen in England – and a still fiercer hatred of the pope. But his origins were less than austere, and not really puritan.

Half of the Cromwell line goes back to Glamorganshire, Wales, and the family of William ap Ievan (William the son of Ievan), who had been of great help to Henry VII in his family’s (the Tudors) bid for the throne. Following the triumphant Tudors to London the William ap Ievans’ were rewarded with property and the right to a coat of arms. Such were the rewards for successful royal service they were able to retain their Welsh properties as well as settle comfortably in London, where one of William’s two sons, Richard, traded as a land agent and accountant, with the other, Morgan, becoming a brewer, and an important and upright member of the church. As was the Welsh custom both sons took their father’s Christian name – adding an s – and called themselves Williams.

In 1495 – or thereabouts – Morgan Williams (Oliver Cromwell’s great-great-grandfather) married Katherine Cromwell, the daughter of Walter Cromwell, who was a wealthy landowner, brewer and blacksmith.

The Cromwells had moved from Nottinghamshire to London at about the same time as the William ap Ievans’, with Walter Cromwell becoming something of a drunk and bar-room brawler who, on one occasion was convicted of ‘wounding to the danger of life’. As can be imagined this did not go down well with his upright and religious son-in-law. But the lectures given him by Morgan went for nothing. Walter eventually – after being convicted of forgery – lost all his lands. It was no doubt after this that the Cromwell family became ever more Puritan in their outlook.

Walter Cromwell had one son, Thomas Cromwell – born in 1485 – who had a pretty uneventful childhood, but as a young man argued many times with his drunken father, arguments that resulted in Thomas taking himself off to Flanders and Italy for a number of years where he learned much about the wool trade (the equivalent of today’s oil business) and the new, treacherous, and highly lucrative territory of international banking, another new industry in which he prospered.

Upon his return to London he set up in business as a wool merchant and money lender and was soon noticed by Cardinal Wolsey who made use of his skills and introduced him into the court of Henry VIII’s. By 1523 Thomas Cromwell was a member of parliament and Wolsey’s confidential agent helping him demolish a few monasteries.

Although the cardinal lost his head Thomas Cromwell held onto his for a bit longer, prospering under the king’s patronage, quickly taking over as the chief agent in monasterial demolition. As a result of carrying out the king’s dirty work he was awarded the posts of Master of the Rolls, chancellor of Cambridge, Lord Privy Seal, Vicar-General, Lord Chamberlain, a knight, a baron, and finally Earl of Essex. But the marriage he arranged for the Henry to Anne of Cleves was his eventual undoing, and on July 28th, 1540, was executed by the sword on Tower Hill much to the ‘delight of the nation’ and as John Buchan puts it:

” It is a story which makes fairy-tales seem prosaic. No stranger figure ever laid its spell on England than this short square man, with the porcine face face and the litter of shaven chins, the small wicked mouth, the long upper lip and the close-set eyes. Yet we know that the leaden countenance could kindle to humour and supreme intelligence, and that when he chose he could be a delectable companion. He had no principles in the moral sense, but he had one or two vigorous intellectual convictions, which were not without wisdom. He would have had the king forego foreign adventures, and bend himself to the single task of unifying Britain. He was determined to make the monarchy supreme, and to ensure that Henry had all the powers which had been wrested from the Pope. He was zealous for the publication of the Bible in English, seeing in that the best way of making final the breach with Rome. He cared nothing for religion… yet he must rank as one of the chief instruments of the English Reformation, for his administrative gifts were of the highest…”

He didn’t forget his family either, and helped amass the fortune of his nephew, Richard Williams, who, in 1529, started working for his uncle’s ecclesiastical demolition company, and as a homage to the Earl of Essex took the name of Cromwell, although, in serious legal matters, he signed himself “Williams (alias Cromwell)”, as was to be the case with his great-grandson Oliver on his marriage settlement documents.

To Be Continued…

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Specifically menstrual blood has always been a highly prized ingredient in many magical potions the magicians want to concoct.

Many ancient cultures believed that the power of creation was within the blood of a woman. Menstrual blood is shed without wounding and was therefore considered to be especially sacred. The only other event on par is the blood that accompanies childbirth. The ancient Egyptians linked the annual flooding of the Nile and its reddish colour with the breaking of the waters and the pregnancy of Isis when she gave birth to the divine child, Horus.

The word menstruation comes from the Greek menus meaning both moon and power, and men meaning month. The menstrual cycle is linked to the Moon, a stellar object that the ancients knew also affected the tides and therefore seemed to regulate the liquids of and on planet Earth. The step of linking the Divine Female with the Moon is therefore but a small step and no doubt one of the foundations upon which astrology would be based.

Certain cultures distorted this ‘moon time’ into various rules: the woman was perceived unclean during this period, forced to live separate from the rest of the family, was not allowed to prepare food, etc. The psychological changes that sometimes accompany the menstrual cycle became known as lunacy – a person being affected by the moon. Once the rules of women were ‘regulated’ by social laws, the role of women within the sacred rituals was slowly replaced by a patriarchal hierarchy, where women occupied a secondary place in society. From being the regulators of the sacred cycle of the world, the new ruler was the sun alone, whereby the women could be left in the caves from which they often uttered their incantations.

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Though many esoteric Western traditions are male-dominated, those with a magical tendency often need a female component, if only because of the historical importance of the female prophetess or priestess that helps the male in his quest for enlightenment. We remember the Sibyls, whom even the Church was unable to remove from history and whose depictions frequently are encountered within church decorations. It was a Sibyl of Anjou who stood by Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders, and brought the Precious Blood of Christ from Jerusalem to Bruges. To make them suitable for Christianity, these Sibyls were often said to have predicted the advent of Christ – thus underlining the Church’s doctrine that everything in history seemed to be geared towards the advent of Christ. After his first coming and the non-completion of His work – in the eyes of the Church – it was of course all about his Second Coming, upon which He would finish what He had started.

Many of the esoteric societies offer special significance to Mary Magdalene, who is clearly one of the companions of Christ, either as a preferred initiate, if not his wife. And of course, the blood magic performed with the Precious Blood of Christ would provide us with the mightiest of all magical potions.

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LINKS:

Website Philip Coppens

Historical Mysteries

SuperNatural ParaNormalities

Photographer embee 

Jinxed 

All these precautions were double necessary with the U-65, because one day at the shipyard a heavy steel girder crashed to the ground and killed two workmen. And some time later yells were heard, coming from the engine room. The rescuers found the sliding door in the bulkhead jammed and when they got through, three men were lying dead on the floor, amid lethal fumes. An inquiry failed to establish what had happened. It couldn’t have been carbon monoxide from the diesels, because they were not running. Chlorine from sea water getting into the batteries then? But the submarine had been in dry-dock…

The U-65 sailed for her trails off the Schelde Estuary (between Belgium and the Netherlands) in good conditions: sea force 3, light airs, excellent visibility. A submarine’s first dive always is an anxious moment, so before diving the captain sent someone to check the upper deck. The bridge watch later declared that the man deliberately walked overboard, without a sound.

Perhaps those anxious looks and muttered words would cease if the U-65 could have a successful first dive. So the heavy hatch cover was closed and the U-boat angled down to the sea-bed… and there she stuck. It took the crew twelve hours to cure the trouble, staggering about like drunkards, some of them already fainted for lack of oxygen.

But okay, there was a Great War going on and German soldiers were not fighting ghosts. Jinxed or not, the U-65 had to sink ships. So she loaded supplies for her first patrol and when the last torpedo was being lowered down the forward hatch the warhead exploded. Five men were instantly killed, among them the second officer, known to the crew as “der Schwarze”, because of his dark complexion. The U-65 was badly damaged and put into dry-dock, and the dead men were taken to Wilhelmshaven for burial.

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Der Schwarze

While the boat was in the dock, the men were given leave. When they were coming up with their kit-bags again for the delayed patrol, an officer counted them all: 31, including the new men, that was correct. And then number 32 appeared, also known as der Schwarze. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the officer from those dark eyes of his, which got the poor man white-faced and trembling like an old lady. The captain believed some joker from ashore had played the dangerous trick. Two days later however, and just before the U-65 was due to sail, the officer deserted what he called a “death boat”.

On her first patrols down-Channel nothing unusual happened with the U-65. She sank some ships, she eluded pursuit… and the morale of the crew slowly improved. In January 1918, the U-boat was heading for a dock-side in Flanders again, and nothing happened there either. The captain of the U-65 got orders to seek out shipping off Portland and one evening, when the weather was stormy, the U-boat surfaced to recharge the batteries. As they were near an enemy naval base, the captain had three men on the bridge keeping a lookout. 

It was the lieutenant of the U-65 who was the first to see a figure standing on deck near the bow, with his feet straddling the plates as the submarine lurched and pitched in the seas. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the lieutenant shouted. “Get below or you’ll be overboard!”

Then the figure turned, and it was Der Schwarze.

The lieutenant called the other lookouts and the captain, and they all stared in numbed horror as the apparition folded its arms and stared back… until, after nearly a minute, it vanished.

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The Death Boat

Some weeks later,  when the U-65 was tied up again at the port of Bruges, the captain went ashore to visit an officers club. There was an air-raid and a splinter from a shell neatly sliced his head from his body.

The new captain found the crew in a state of shock. High-ranking officers came on board and listened carefully to what each man had to say. Those most demoralized were drafted to other duties and the gap was filled with a fresh draft. A priest was called in to exorcise the U-65 and drive out all evil spirits in the name of God. To decommission the submarine on the grounds of diabolic possession would have created a dangerous precedent, so in May 1918 the Death Boat set out for another patrol, this time in the Bay of Biscay.

It was a terrible trip. The seas were high and the success against enemy shipping was poor. A torpedoman went mad and had to be given morphia. When he came round he was sent to the upper deck to get some air, accompanied by another man. The torpedoman went berserk again and took a running jump overboard. He made no attempt to swim.

Off Ushant, when the U-65 was rolling heavily, the chief engineer slipped and was washed overboard. Twenty-nine of the men were left now. Everyone felt that a malevolent fate had the U-65 in its grip. And it had yet to pass through the Straits of Dover on the way home… Three U-boats had recently been destroyed there.

On 31 July 1918, German naval headquarters reported that the U-65 was missing, presumed lost… and that would have been the end of the story. But three weeks previously an American submarine on the west coast of Ireland had spotted from periscope depth a surfaced U-boat and read the number on the cunning tower: “U-65″. The captain already was manoeuvring for attack, when right in front of his eyes the U-boat just blew up, “sky high, with a roar you could have heard in Arizona”.

Had a warhead exploded by accident? Was it sabotage by an unhinged crewman? Had another U-boat attacked the U-65 in error and then made off undetected? This one thing can be said for sure: once belief in the haunting had established itself among the crew, panic was inevitable, and from that much else may have flowed.

And you can leave a haunted house, but you can’t leave a steel cigar, fathoms beneath the sea, amid the perils of a Great War…

Other True Ghost Stories of the Great War:

• The Hell Hound of No Man’s Land
• Ghost Cavalry of the Great War
• Phantoms of the Great War
• The Angels of Mons

The Ghent Altarpiece, also known as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, completed in 1432 by the Van Eyck Brothers (Hubert & Jan), is a large and complex polyptych, originally made for the Joost Vyd Chapel in Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. In the eighties, for security reasons, it was removed to another chapel in the cathedral. The Mystic Lamb is regarded as a true artistic highlight of Christianity and of Western civilisation. It is said – but it’s not sure – that Hubert Van Eyck started the work and his brother Jan, the famous Flemish Primitive who was attached to the court of the Duke of Burgundy, finished it.

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A Masterwork of Mystery

The Ghent Altarpiece consists of a complex series of 24 scenes, with two doors and a central piece which is showing some saints and apostles adoring the Mystic Lamb, or the symbol of Jesus Christ. From the panels to the left and to the right, pious hermits and pilgrims, Just Judges and Knights of Christ are approaching the ceremony in the middle. The upper register shows Christ as a King, between the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, Adam and Eve. Inside, there are angels singing and making music.

The oil painting offers intricate details and composition, unrivaled realism, mystical meaning and a translucent use of colour which is responsible for the beautiful light. Over the centuries, the masterpieces has retained its luminous colours.

The polyptych, surrounded by mystery, has always been the main attraction of the impressive cathedral of Saint Bavo. After being kidnapped by the French revolutionary forces, some panels of the Mystic Lamb returned to Ghent. In 1816 however, the panels were sold for 100.000 guilders to an antiquary, while the bishopric knew they had a value of at least four times this sum… and indeed, the panels were sold very soon to a museum in Berlin for 400.000 guilders. At the end of the 19th century, these panels were cut lengthwise. In 1919, thanks to the Treaty of Versailles, they returned to Belgium again. Oh yeah, and what are the Knights Templar doing on this very catholic piece of art? 

Maybe the greatest mystery of the many mysteries surrounding the Mystic Lamb, was caused by the lower left panel, called the Just Judges. The original panel got stolen in 1934, has never been found and was replaced by a copy. It’s Belgium’s most famous unsolved mystery. Countless amateur and professional sleuths are still tracking clues. In a BBC interview with crime writer Minette Walters, Ghent’s former police chief Karel Mortier referred to the theft as “the art crime of the century”.

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The Theft of the Just Judges

In the night of April 10, 1934, two panels – the Just Judges and St. John the Baptist – measuring 1.49 x 55.5 centimeter, were stolen from the cathedral. On May 1, the bishop of Ghent received a letter, which said that the sender possessed both panels. The letter was signed “D.U.A.”. Provided he would receive 1 million francs for the Judges, he would return St. John without any charge. DUA asked the bishop to answer him through an advertisement in a newspaper, and St. John was delivered at the railroad station Brussels-North. But instead of the requested sum, the authorities only wanted to pay 25.000 francs… and the Just Judges did not return home.

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November 25… Arsène Goedertier, aged 57, a broker who lived and worked in the small town of Wetteren, aged 57, collapsed after a speech at a political rally. On his death bed, he informed his friend Georges de Vos in private that he had a file on the crime at his home. Goedertier tried to say more… but finally took the secret in his grave. Later, the police found in his home carbon copies of the messages which had been sent to the bishop by DUA. Only one single cryptic line spoke of the possible whereabouts of the Judges: the panel was “in a place where neither I nor anyone else” could recover it drawing attention.

The wife of Arsène Goedertier revealed that her late husband was an avid reader of detective novels and a true fan of Arsène Lupin, the hero in some of Maurice Leblanc’s mystery novels. Arsène, of course, was also Goedertier’s first name, and Lupin was a “gentlemen thief”. Goedertier had read The Hollow Needle (L’aiguille creuse) several times. The theme of the novel was “art thefts”. Arsène Goedertier undoubtedly felt inspired by Arsène Lupin, who always left a trail of coded messages after his thefts. Goedertier used a similar code in his ransom notes.

Arsène Goedertier was an eccentric, but although he might have typed and mailed the ransom notes, I doubt he was the original thief… and he sure didn’t act alone. The broker from Wetteren was in a very healthy financial situation. Maybe he chased some sort of a symbolic revenge. Indeed, Goedertier is said to have been “angry” at the Catholic Church.

Since 1956, former police chief Karel Mortier has dedicated himself to the search for the Lost Judges. Mortier beliefs the panel was hidden somewhere in Saint Bavo Cathedral. X-ray investigations however were fruitless. Another policeman, Chris Noppe, is convinced that the Judges are hiding in the coffin of King Albert I. A few months before the theft, the Belgian King – the hero of the Great War – died in a climbing accident, which was possibly a set up for murder. The body of King Albert I now lies in the crypt of the royal family in the palace of Laeken, near Brussels. Belgium’s own Miss Marple, Maria De Roo, is defending a conspiracy theory, claiming the authorities retrieved the panel. And I think Goedertier and two accomplices worked for Himmler’s SS and were murdered when they double-crossed a nazi agent.

Van Eyck, neo-Templar and alchemist

I do believe Van Eyck’s painting held a “Da Vinci Code”, containing information the true whereabouts of the Holy Grail, also known as the Holy Blood(line) of Christ. In the 16th century, Jan Van Eyck already was described by art historian Giorgi Vasari as an alchemist, suggesting he was a member of a secret brotherhood. In his article 666 = Satan’s Song? – Part 2: The Just Judges and Otto Rahn, Philip Coppens says that modern freemasons have noted how Van Eyck depicted a working lodge in a drawing of Saint Barbara. 

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Jan Van Eyck entered the service of Philip the Good in 1425. The Duke of Burgundy was moving his court between his palaces in Brussels, Lille and Bruges. Van Eyck resided in Lille and mostly in Bruges, where he died in 1440. He performed certain missions for the Duke, but the exact nature of these missions has remained unknown. Both men were very close, the Duke served as godfather to one of Jan’s children.

While working on his masterpiece, Jan’s patron established the Order of the Golden Fleece. The name has never been fully explained, but it is no secret that Philip was very interested in alchemy. In his palace in Brussels for example, he installed a real “alchemical room”. Though Van Eyck was employed by Philip the Good, he took the commission for the Vyd family. He knew he would have to spend a great amount of time on this Ghent Altarpiece. So, even if Jan only completed what Hubert had begun, he needed the consent of his patron. But that seemed to be no problem at all.

The Mystic Lamb clearly depicts Jesus as a King. This was very uncommon in medievalor Gothic paintings. It was also very uncommon in 1432, and even dangerous, to depict a bunch of arch-heretics on your piece of art. Under pressure of King Philip of France, in 1307 many of the Knights Templar were arrested, tortured – so they would give false confessions – and burned at the stake. The Order was disbanded by Pope Clement V in 1312 on the charge of religious heresy and sexual misconduct.

So, here is one of the great Mysteries of the Lamb of God: what are the Templars doing on this “true” catholic masterpiece? The title of the panel is “Milites Christi”, Soldiers of Christ, the official name of the Knights Templar. Moreover, they don’t look like sinners who are seeking forgiveness, do they? No, this one knight in his shining armour rides with great kings and noblemen, bearing the shield and the banner of the Temple!

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On the Ghent Altarpiece, the Mystic Lamb is spilling his blood in the Cup of the Last Supper. This bleeding lamb is common christian iconography, but the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) and the Chalice usually doesn’t show up together with the Templars, who were regarded as the keepers of the Holy Grail… or the secret of the Holy Blood(line) of Christ.

The Nazi Plot Theory

I have developed the “Nazi Plot Theory” for the first time in a book called Mysteries of the Mystic Lamb (Mysteries van het Lam Gods, 1991). Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933, just a year before the Judges got stolen. I do think the Nazi’s commissioned the theft, because of the mystic and heretic connotations of Ghent Altarpiece. Hitler wanted to seize the iconography of the Mystic Lamb and incorporate it into the Holy Canon of his own “Arian” religion, that had to compete with Christianity.

The Mystic Lamb should be read as a code and some of the panels could be incorporating documents or a map, concerning the Holy Blood brought by the Knights Templar and Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders, to Bruges. The first Grail story was commissioned by his son, Philip of Alsace. In the late 19th century the chaplain of the Holy Blood Chapel in Bruges seems to have turned into a satanist. His tale was told by Joris-Karl Huysmans in his book Down There (Là-Bas) and preceded that other story of a satanist priest, who found a treasure and/or a secret concerning the Templars, the Grail and the Holy Blood(line) of Christ. In other words, is the story of Bérenger Saunière, the parish priest of Rennes-le-Château, nothing else than an echo, a hoax, part of a disinformation project designed to turn the eyes of the world to southern France, so that the true secret could remain a secret?

The obsession of the top Nazi’s for the Ghent Altarpiece is a matter of record. During World War II, the Ghent Altarpiece was stolen by the SS and hidden in a salt mine near Salzburg. A special agent was sent to Belgium with only one task: finding the Judges! It was to SS-officer Henry Koehn that Goedertier’s widow spoke of her husband’s fascination for The Hollow Needle. Interestingly, Leblanc’s stories of Lupin, a character he created in 1905, showed a great number of indirect references to the mysteries of Rennes-le-Château…

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Read more:

Mysteries of the Mystic Lamb

The Holy Blood of Bruges, a New Jerusalem

Rennes-le-Château and the Holy Blood of Bruges

Ypres During the War

In an act of bravery befitting heroes, the Dutch army engineers had managed to slow the German advance by destroying some of the levees that kept the area country from being reclaimed by the sea. The result was the German forces had only one way to get into France: Through Ieper. The defenders grimly dug their trenches and prepared their weapons. They would not allow the Germans to pass without a fight.

And fight they did. Over the next four years, the defenders fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the Great war, the infamous battleground of Flanders. Over the course of the war, Ypres changed hands three times.

It was first captured by the Allies in 1914 to prevent the German war machine marching across France. In 1915, the Germans mounted their counter attack with a terrifying new weapon. Although they had used it on the eastern front before, the Germans now turned their latest weapon on Ypres defenders- Chlorine Gas. Unprepared for the new weapon, the Allies where driven out, and forced to entrench themselves around the city again. The third battle of Ypres commenced in 1917, and was the bloodiest yet. Pushing into the city, the Allies paid a cost that was on the wrong side of half a million lives- for only few miles of terrain.

The worst part of all this? By now, Ypres itself had been all but destroyed by each side’s attempt to destroy the other with heavy artillery. Soldiers fought and died over a piece of rubble. A strategically important piece of rubble, but rubble nevertheless.

Ypres Today

My journey began with the town of Ypres itself. Currently a thriving area of around thirty thousand people, it would be hard to picture Ypres as anything other than what it is today: a pleasant market town, filled with friendly people, and a hotspot for tourists. The marks of the war remain of course, the Menin gate (discussed later), a war museum, and a number of other landmarks that point to a violent past. Perhaps the most amazing thing though, is the fact that the city was there for me to wonder through at all. In 1919, the city was nothing but a smoking ruin, with practically no buildings standing.

Ypres had also seen the debut of not just one, but two new chemical weapons, Mustard gas had been deployed in the theatre of war surrounding the city in 1917. It’s important to note that both sides, not just the Germans, used these chemical weapons. Today, Ypres and Hiroshima are leading centers for campaigns for nuclear and chemical disarmament. For obvious reasons.

The Menin Gate

The Menin Gate is a massive war memorial, dedicated to those allied troops who where never found and given a proper burial. Many where never given a proper grave as they where simply too disfigured to be identified. Many corpses where never recovered at all, atomized by shells or drowned in the mud. It lists over 50,000 names, and they still did not have enough space to fit all the names on. The remainder are inscribed on a wall at Tyne Cot Cemetery.

The gate itself is situated over the main road in and out of the town. As you can see in the above picture, many people place memorials to dead relatives and friends here, if they know there is no grave to visit. It consists of a main tunnel area (Pictured above), and on each side of the tunnel is a “wing” (Pictured below). Linking the tunnels to the wings are two sets of stairs. Every wall on the inside of the Tunnel, on the stairs, and every wall on the wings contain names.

Each day at 20:00, all traffic through the gate stops and the local fire brigade’s buglers sound the last post in memory of all those who gave their lives to keep the nation free. This has occurred every day without fail since 1927, except while the city was occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Leaving Ypres for the Flanders Battlefield

If you had a relative or friend in the Great War, then they almost certainly spent at least some time in Flanders. Likewise, I visited the war cemeteries, four of them along a single 4km stretch of road. In the first cemetery I visited, I noticed that the gravestones had a most unusual arrangement. Many where placed touching one another, and there where large gaps in the rows. There where also some stones placed down the side of the cemetery at a 90 degree angle to the others.

Upon asking, I found the reason for each of these:

Groups of touching headstones where groups of men who had died together, and their remains could not be separated, or they did not know to whom each “item” belonged. Such situations often occurred when a group of soldiers where standing together when a shell landed on them. They where therefore buried in one large grave, with the headstones all touching.

Men would never be buried where a shell had landed, and so the gaps in the graveyard where areas that where previously shell craters.

Sometimes a shell would land on the graveyard and exhume the bodies of those interred within, often utterly destroying all physical remains. Some remains could not be identified. These troops where given a second empty grave at the side of the cemetery as a marker that they where laid to rest somewhere in the area, but it was not known exactly where.

I noticed one grave had a massive amount of personal tributes on it, and as I read the headstone, I could see why. The grave belonged to the youngest known solider to be killed in action during the Great War.

From the cemetery itself I followed a path around the back towards the front line medical dug outs, where I was shown a place that was most important to the lasting artistic impact of the Great War. In these dug outs, Colonel McCrae wrote his famous poem “In Flanders’s Fields”:

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

In the dugout pictured, McCrae wrote that poem. That tight, dank hole in the earth feels more like a tomb than a bunker, let alone a place to take a wounded soldier.

Yet in spite of all the hardship, the brave soldiers kept on fighting and dying in their millions. With a somber feeling in my chest, I moved on to the next leg of my journey, Tyne Cot.

Tyne Cot Cemetery

As I previously mentioned, The Menin gate was not sufficient to house the names of all the missing deceased, and so a wall was created at Tyne Cot with all the remaining names in it, some 20,000 of them.

The Cemetery is also the final resting place to many thousands of Allied troops as well:

Sharp eyed readers may notice a very slight curve in the formation of the gravestones, the reason for this is that virtually all of these soldiers died charging a single German bunker. Each Great War graveyard has a monument in it called the cross of sacrifice, which is built in honor of these men. At Tyne Cot, the cross is built on top of that bunker that so many men died for. A sort of poetic burial, they can now rest easily, having reached their goal.

Among the graves can be found a final, moving gesture. Two headstones, marked with the flag of Germany belonging to German servicemen. Their names have been taken from their dog tags, and they have been laid to rest with all the care and attention that the commonwealth forces paid to their own dead. Their epitaphs read (in German); “Fallen for Germany.”

Tyne Cot is one of the larger of the war cemeteries in the area, with over 11,000 interred from all over the commonwealth.

I looked around the cemetery one last time, and then departed for my next destination, Artillery Wood.

Artillery Wood And The Story Of Hedd Wyn

Due to an unfortunate accident with my computer, at this point most of my pictures have been lost. I will continue to write though, as I hope you will stay with me until the end of my story.

Artillery Wood was a somewhat important location for me to visit as it contains the graves of many of my countrymen. During the Great War, Wales gave the highest percentage of our population to battle (nearly 14%) out of the countries of the United Kingdom. It is also the final resting place of one of our national heroes, the bard Hedd Wyn, author of the poem “Yr Arwr”, or the hero in English. The poem itself is too long to be posted in this article, plus it’s in Welsh (a language not exactly widespread), but if you want to read it, it can be found here.

Hedd Wyn was the bardic name of Ellis Humphrey Evans. As a farm worker, up until that point he had been exempt from the draft as his work was considered “vital to the war effort on the home front”. However, as the war dragged on, the draft became more and more widespread, and either Ellis or one of his brothers would need to join the armed forces.

Ellis joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in June of 1917 to prevent any of his brothers being sent into battle. Within a month he had completed the work that was to win him another chair at the Eisteddfod (a welsh celebration of culture), which he had won or come close to winning several times. After some trouble getting his entry sent off (his officer could not speak welsh and therefore could not verify the safety of the document), the entry was received by the Eisteddfod committee under the pseudonym of Fleur De Les.

September, 1917 and Britain’s Welsh Prime minister, David Lloyd George, is preparing to award the chair (the highest prize at the Eisteddfod). The Arch druid Dyfed announces the winner of the competition to be Yr Arwr, by Fleur De Les. The audience begins to applause and look around. Yet no one stands up.

The Arch druid declares the winner again, and still no one stands. Fleur De Les, Hedd Wyn, Ellis Humphrey Evans, has been dead for six weeks. Cut down as he charged the German position at Battery Copse. His last words: “Yes, I am very happy”, as he lay dying in a medical dug out.

31,000 men died with him. Field Marshall sir Douglass Haig had this to say about the battle in his diary: “A fine day’s work.”

The chair was draped in a black cloth, and amid the silence of a funeral procession, the other bards slowly gave tribute to Hedd Wyn, one by one. It was than taken by horse and cart 90 miles to his home in Trawsfynydd. In a final twist of fate, the chair was carved by a Flemish worker who had fled Flanders earlier that year.

Myself and the Welsh people in my group each laid a daffodil (the flower of Wales) on his grave and sang Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (land of my fathers, the Welsh national anthem). We took some pictures, including this one (myself pictured), and then move on to our last destination, a German war cemetery.

Langemarck War Cemetery

I have a great deal of sympathy for the German troops of the Great War. I don’t blame Germany for the war any more than I blame anyone else. I blame the system of politics that was supposed to prevent a war. To lighten the mood a little, let me show you a youtube video from the British sitcom, Blackadder. It pretty much sums up what happened exactly, as well as various attitudes of the troops (Privates who had no idea what was going on, officers who thought they knew what was going on…):

One dead arch duke later and the powder keg was well and truly lit. The two super alliances where at each other faster than a Mac and PC user.

What we did to the German dead after the war though was all but unforgivable. Commonwealth graves are on land which has been given pretty much indefinitely, but the Germans where only given a few areas and a limited amount of time to keep their dead interred. Eventually the Germans had to exhume their dead, and many of them where placed in a mass crypt at Langemarck. Many where never given a true gravestone, but where instead recorded in the German equivalent of the Menin gate, the Kameraden Grab, which can also be found at Langemarck.

German war cemeteries are very different from Commonwealth ones. The Germans are buried eight to each plot, with a single flat basalt marker for all of them. German cemeteries use dark colours rather than the whites of the commonwealth. As a memorial, four statues stand watch over the cemetery, one representing each element of the armed forces: the air force, the army, the navy and one for the civilians who worked to supply the army. The sculpture was created by Emil Krieger.

In Closing

My time among the dead opened my eyes a great deal to the events of the Great War. It’s one thing to learn in a school about how many millions died here, and how many millions died there. Even looking at demographic charts, you can’t truly appreciate what happened in Europe between 1914 and 1918. If your country is a member of the commonwealth, then it’s more than likely at least one person in your family fought in the Great War. And they almost certainly went through Ypres.

The most terrifying realization about my journey though with this: The Great War was overshadowed by an even bloodier conflict less than thirty years after it had closed. The “war to end all wars” they called it. And still the second world war raged on after it. And after that we had the cold war, the Serbian war, the IRA. Sometimes it scares me that this continent may never actually know peace. And it scares me even more when I think there may be a third world war less than a decade away from us. To those who would commit us to war, I say this:

Walk through Flanders’s fields. Walk through Tyne Cot Cemetery. Read the names on the Menin gate. Every one of those people was a human being. They had families. They had lives. They had a job. They may have had children. They had a story, a story cut brutally short by the hands of incompetent leaders and bungling officers, they where People. They where not statistics. 57,000 causalities in one day at the Somme, and I think many of you regard that the same way you regard the £ 35,334,012,000, Britain alone spent on the Great War. People’s lives are not resources to be used. They are not money to be spent. They are living, breathing, thinking people!

They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them.
– Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Thank you for letting me share my experiences with you.