Shot At Dawn – Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row ………

They blew in May 1915 when Canadian army doctor, John McCrae, wrote these immortal lines. They blow today. Colorful memorials of a war-torn world entrenched in the bloody, muddy fields of France and Flanders.

On route to the World War 1 battle fields in the Somme region of France my husband and I (and our well-traveled dog, Spike) spend a couple of days in the southern Flanders town of Poperinge. Close by is Ypres which found itself in the thick of the Allied war effort for 4 years during the course of WW1. In the main square at Ypres is the Cloth Hall, home to a memorial museum that chronicles the devastation. Trenches have been preserved in the area – Hellfire Corner, Menin Road and Sanctuary Wood amongst others. Hard as we try it is impossible to conceive the horror and appalling conditions which imprisoned the young Commonwealth elite in the pitted patchwork of Flanders’ fields. Only the clusters of somber stone crosses strewn over the countryside bear ghostly witness.

Popering was positioned behind the Allied Front and remained unoccupied for almost the duration of WW1. Yet not without its dead. Its British Army dead. Shot at dawn with British Army bullets.

Talbot House

To the north of the town square, in the appropriately named Gasthuisstraat (Guest House Street), is Talbot House. It was opened in 1915 as an “Every Man’s Club” where all Tommies, regardless of rank, were welcome. It is open to visitors and one is free to linger in this “soldiers’ home away from home” including library and chapel. It is best described as a “living museum” as it also serves as a hostel, offering accommodation on a self-catering basis. The garden is the epitome of manicured tranquility, yet watching the short movie (A Peace In Flanders) screened in the adjacent Visitors Center, drives home the cold, brutal reason for the existence of this garden, and indeed Talbot House, in the first place.

I cross the threshold of a tiny cell to the south of the town square behind the Town Hall. An unfathomable sense of futility invades my thinking. I feel a reluctance to enter, yet I am drawn to the frames, neatly aligned on the otherwise bare concrete walls. Three photographs per frame: Photograph 1 – bullet hole. Photograph 2 – face of soldier. Photograph 3 – inscription Shot At Dawn. The faces, pale and child-like, of British Army deserters shot at dawn in the courtyard visible through the single, barred window. This was the death cell where they were imprisoned prior to execution. An execution pole stands outside – a stained and splintered wooden pillar, protected now by a perspex sheath. A plaque reveals its sober history in Flemish. A rough translation reads as follows: Between 1916 and 1919 many British soldiers were executed in this courtyard. Most of them were sentenced to death for desertion. The execution of deserters is today a symbol of the inhumanity of the war. It is not certain how many soldiers were executed here. There is evidence of eight, but also strong suspicion of more. Possibly 16 in total. The execution pole that stands here, however, was only used in the last execution on 19 May 1919.

There is a place where the people are poor and the hops now grow where the bodies once fell. The Battlefields of the Somme encompass an approximately 10 square mile area around the small French town of Albert, bordered to the south by the Somme River. It is the site of the greatest tactical blunder in British military history. On July 1, 1916, 60 000 soldiers were mowed down at dawn as they scrambled from their trenches. 20 000 dead that first day! The Battle of the Somme lasted until November and claimed 80 000 British lives.

The War Cemetery at Delville Wood near Longueval, France

This area is mourned and honored not only by the British. The soil is steeped in South African blood too. Delville Wood is where South Africans, black and white, got their first bloody exposure to “modern” warfare. The South African Infantry Brigade was ordered to hold Delville Wood at all cost. They paid a devastating price. Only 113 khaki clad soldiers have identifiable graves in the cemetery at Delville Wood. 65 unidentified men lie beneath tombstones inscribed with the words: Soldiers of the Great War, Known unto God. The remains of 538 South Africans lie buried in the soil of the wood itself.

The South African memorial (which also commemorates the soldiers who gave their lives in WW2 and the Korean War) is a place of beauty and interest erected on the hallowed ground amidst the green and generous trees of the tragic Delville Wood.

The lushness of the land today is largely irreconcilable with the bleak reality of 100 years ago, yet pock-marked trenches and huge holes caused by underground explosions remain. The most famous are the double craters on Hawthorn Ridge and the Lochnagar Crater near Albert. Local farmers, still to this day, plough up unexploded shells, rifles, tin hats and dug-out roofs!

Outside our hotel in Poix de Picardie

The Somme region does not cater for large droves of tourists and frankly, it is an area best explored along among your own thoughts and melancholy. Albert is a logical base while Amiens and Peronne are the larger towns in the region. We stay, however, in the ancient Gallo-Roman town of Poix de Picardie. it is a place, nestled in a sculptured valley, that will delight lovers of history, old architecture and landscaped gardens. We wake up on the Sunday morning to find the village square outside our hotel room transformed overnight into a colorful and bustling flower and vegetable market where we can buy anything from a herd of cattle to a cell phone. Unintentionally my husband buys a horse-meat hotdog! Suspecting its identity after one bite he distributed it between Spike and the nearest trash bin. Franco-chevalphiles we are not!

The white cliffs at Dieppe, France

We journey west through undulating hills of unsurpassed serenity. Picnic hamper and portable barbecue in tow, towards Dieppe. Sheer white cliffs soar splendidly skyward from the heaving swells that beat and retreat on the black, pebbled sand. We move the barbecue 3 times (ending up with our backs almost against the cliffs) and eventually eat a hurried meal of rare chicken pieces. For such a tranquil spot the tides sure are temperamental – and have witnessed such tragedy. It was off this coast in February 1917 that 607 soldiers of the South African Native Labor Contingent lost their lives when the troopship SS Mendi sank after a collision. Their remains are interred in the war cemetery at Arques la Bataille near Dieppe which contains the largest concentration of South African war dead.

While the world pursues its relentless race to prosper and progress, the rural people of Flanders and France still harvest history’s madness – although the hops now grow, where the bodies once fell.