Today was Flanders Fields day and a major history lesson for me.

In school I was never into geography or history.   It simply didn’t interest me.   However, since I started traveling, I’ve found I’ve actually became very interested in both those subjects.

So, today I learnt about WWI, which I somewhat ashamedly admit that I hardly knew anything about before today.

I woke up earlier than I needed to again.   Today it was 6:30am even though the tour company wasn’t picking me up until 9:00.

Oh well, plenty of time to casually get ready, have some breakfast in the hostel lounge, and slowly walk over to the meeting point down the road.

Throughout the day I took a whopping 150+ photos which you can find in the photo gallery at the end of this blog.

Also, I took notes about alot of stuff my guide/driver Philip said but I know some of it’s going to be wrong.

Please don’t be a “oh it was actually 100,000 not 145,000” kind of person.

With that, here was the day…

The tour group

The tour company I used was Quasimodo tours based out of Bruges.   Philip, the owner has been running this tour since 1990 and after 33 years doing it, he’s still going strong.

The cost of the 8 hour tour was a pricy 89€ ($130) but definitely well worth it.

There were 3 pickup points and when I was looking at hostels, I had made a point to stay at one close to one of those pickup points.

Turns out I was the first pickup and I was the only one at my pickup point so I had first choice of where to sit.   Naturally, I picked the front row window.

At the end of the pickups there were 26 people on board – 12 couples, myself and one other single traveler.

I honestly think I may have been the youngest there as almost everyone there was in their 60s or 70s.   Kind of a nice feeling being the youngin.

How the war started

Okay, like I said, I may have some facts wrong here.   Honestly, I’m not about to pop online and fact check everything I type in this blog.   Ya know, too much work.

So, from what I surmised, the German Austro-Hungarians Empire was always looking to expand their empire and they looked to the north to the tiny country of Bosnia and said “hey, we want that”.

Eventually they did get their way as Bosnia just was not able to defend themselves against the mighty empire.

The Serbs next door in Serbia were not happy at all about this.   They were so unhappy that they arranged a plan to assassinate the heir presumptive to the throne of the empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Well, you can imagine how the Austro-Hungarians felt about that.   Yeah, they were pissed and they were also kind of happy because now they had the perfect excuse to declare war on the Serbs and invade their territory.

The Serbs at the time were aligned with the Russians so now the Russians were dragged into the war as well.

And ya know what?   The Russians had a treaty with the French so, yup, they were now involved as well.

Germany saw what was happening and decided to pre-emptively strike France before they could do it to them.

There were a few ways for them to invade Germany but they figured out the best way was to march into France from the northeast.

Problem was the Netherlands and Belgium were in their way.

They decided to march around the Netherlands because they wanted them to remain neutral so they could be used strategically in the future so they went marching toward Belgium.

Now, the Germans thought they could just ask the King of Belgium “Hey, you don’t mind if we march through, right?” and were expecting the King to capitulate.

However, Belgium had a long standing treaty with the UK to not allow the Germans to send troops through their country so, much to the surprise of the German leaders, he declined their request.

This, of course, led to the eventual German invasion of Belgium on their way to France.

It was at this point that the UK was now involved.   They saw that Belgium had upheld their part of the treaty and felt obligated to support them in the war.

And with the UK involved, well that meant the whole Commonwealth was also involved so Canada, New Zealand, and Australia were in the fight too.

So many countries involved!   It’s actually insane how it all blossomed into a World War.

Of course there were more countries involved after that (notably the USA which I’ll talk about later) but we only talked about the war from the Belgium perspective today.

The invasion

When the invasion started the Germans thought they would run through Belgium in just 5 days and then it would be a mere 5 weeks to completely take over France.

Oh, how very wrong they were…

They hadn’t anticipated the fight back from the Belgiums or the fact that the UK/Commonwealth would also join the fight.

Also the land was swampy and it was hard to march or run tanks through the swamp.

Eventually they did slowly take over some Belgium cities and the Allies had to retreat each time.   When they took over the major city of Antwerp, however, the troops backed up towards the front line on the border of France.

In doing so, the town of Bruges was pretty much left untouched as the Germans just marched past the city towards the Western Front.

They first had to get through the area of Flanders.

Flanders Fields

Our tour today was exclusively in the Flanders area.

We visited quite a few historical sites: German Cemetery, St Julien Canadian Memorial Park, the Yorkshire Trench & Dugout, Essex Farm Cemetery, Ypres, New Zealand Memorial Park, Tyne Cot Memorial for the missing, Hill 60, Hooge Crater Museum, Brother in Arms Memorial, and the 5th Australian Division Memorial.

There was so much history to be witnessed throughout the day that I just wouldn’t be able to blog about it all.   Besides, this blog is inspirational not informational so I’ll just throw out some tidbits I found interesting.

Germany Cemetery:   There are 44,000 German soldiers currently buried at the German Cemetery.   Just a fact that there is a German Cemetery in Belgium blows my mind.

Commonwealth Cemetery:   It has over 35,000 tombstones but only 12,000 soldiers are buried there as the rest are still lost out there.   There are actually more than 50,000 soldiers still unaccounted for and every year some new human remains are found.

So many shells:   During the war there were over 1.5 billion shells shot by both sides.   Yup, that’s B for billion.   Alot of them didn’t explode as they sank into the soft, swampy land when they landed.

Still a threat:   Artillery shells from 100 years ago are still found quite regularly in the area by farmers as they plow their lands.   It’s actually a real threat.   Approximately 160,000kg of shells are still found each year and there have been 320 deaths from them since the war ended with the most recent being 4 years ago.

Chemical warfare:   The Germans were the first to introduce chemical munitions to the war and it took the allies by surprise.   The soldiers thought it was just another smoke screen sent out so they walked right into it like sheep to a slaughter.

The chemicals were soon perfected to not kill, but to incapacitate forcing the allies to use extra resources to drag them off the battlefield and to care for them.   Eventually the notorious mustard gas was made having the quality of being clear and the only way soldiers knew it was out there was with the smell of mustard in the air.

Hill 60:   Named for the fact that this hill was 60m above sea level, this is one of the places the Germans were camped and where the allies pulled off a massive explosive attack.   For months they dug 9km of tunnels 100 feet deep in order to plant and simultaneously detonate 450 tonnes of explosives under the unsuspecting invaders.

The resulting explosive attack incinerated the area to a temperature of 3000°C forming a larger crater that still remains.   It instantly killed 10,000 soldiers and the allies were able to quickly take over the position in a mere 7 hours.

Politics get in the way:   The allies couldn’t capitalize on their take over of Hill 60 as their advance was halted as the politicians and generals squabbled about how to proceed.   The resulting delay actually allowed the Germans to retake the Hill not too long after.

Trenches:   On the Western Front there were over 40,000km of trenches dug.   Soldiers spent 16 days in the trenches and then the next 14 days relatively safely behind the front lines.   The conditions there were the worse you can imagine.   No toilets, cold food, constant shelling and only 1m of space per soldier.   By the end of the war 1 in every 5 soldiers in trenches had died.

USA gets involved:   In April of 1917, almost a full 3 years after the war started, the US decided to stop remaining neutral and declared war.   By late fall they had sent over 130,000 troops to help in the fight.   Soon after they were sending 100,000 troops a month and then 10,000 troops a day.   The Germans finally saw they were severely outmatched and had no path to victory.   By November 1918 they capitulated and the war came to an end.

Summary

Well, that was quite a day.   The weather today for the first time this trip was grey and somber and I thought it was very fitting for the experience.

With each city and country I visit I learn more about the history and I’m very thankful to be doing so.   Yes, most of the time these trips are about walking tours, people I meet along the way, and new foods to try.   Sometimes though, there are some profound experiences thrown in there as well like today.

If you’re interested in some of my other adventures like this, you can read about my time in Auschwitz and also the time I visited the Killing Fields in Cambodia.