So we ventured North-ish to Belgium. Through a quirk of history we have inherited the ‘Dead Mans Penny’ of Tom McMahon (59th Battalion, 5th Div), a great Uncle of Jo’s who died at the Battle of Fromelles. If you haven’t seen one, the Dead Mans Penny is a bronze medallion slightly smaller than a bread and butter plate that was given to grieving families after the war. So in order to pay a visit to the final resting place of a young man who’s penny graces our wall, we set the in-car GPS and drove through the wide, flat, wet paddocks of Flanders to the cemetery at VC Corner.
Now unlike the Cameron brothers who survived a couple of years of the Western Front, young Tom only arrived in France a couple of weeks before the great slaughter at Fromelles in 1917. He was the son of a very Irish mother who strongly objected to him going. Like many others, Tom doesn’t have a grave but still lies out there under the fields, but he is inscribed on the wall with hundreds of others.
Now the family legend is that he was he was hit by a shell while carrying bombs into the attack, which I would like to think is exactly the sort of job a Serjeant would give the new bloke in his first battle. Obviously this unfortunate confluence of events would have given him an awfully quick ending, but it meant there was no body to bury. But as Jo adroitly observed, it may be some consolation to know that this young Irish lad from Northcote is contributing to this great crop of potatoes growing around the memorial.
Now I am in 2 minds about which is more cruel, to die within weeks of arriving in France or to struggle though 2 years of the worst fighting (and 2 Somme winters) only to die of the Spanish Flu a week after armistice. There is no answer to that.
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So we were booked into the Novotel in Ypres (pronounced eepers I think) and I can hugely recommend it for the location which is right in the rebuilt mediaeval part of town and only 1 block from the Menin gate.
Now as you can see from the photo above we arrived in Ypres late Sunday to find the whole centre of town fenced off for some sort of summer carnival. Since we were famished, we set off amongst the market stalls to find some yummy, tasty treat we just knew would be there. Soon we found ourselves surrounded by an endless choice of sausages. When I say endless choice, some were longer than others and some were over-cooked. Now to anyone reading this and looking for a great business opportunity I say that the first person to drive a Taco Truck to Belgium is going to crack the market wide open. Even when we made it to dinner our choice was simply cheeseburger or stew. This is a country badly in need of a change of diet, or Metamucil.
But there were some good things happening, like the Belgian National Beach Volleyball Championship. They were exactly as good as you expect Belgian Beach Volleyballers to be and really weirdly juxtaposed with medieval architecture.
And we found my new favourite brand of beer – the 1 litre beer. Yes, you need 2 hands to drink it.
And obviously the nightly Last Post ceremony held at the Menin Gate is a lovely, moving experience.
Now Jo tells me that in a previous blog entry I was a bit harsh by implying Belgium is flat, green and boring. She thinks I should blog some sort of apology. Now I will admit that Ypres is a delightful town that has recovered nicely from the 1914-18 civic renewal project that we and the Germans conducted there. They have done this in the now traditional manner of rebuilding the really nice buildings and putting hotels, bars and shops in all the gaps.
So let’s balance the ledger on Belgium.
The bad:
- Cyclists. The buggers are everywhere and they observe no rules. And pedestrians don’t even look before crossing the road. Nearly scored a 1200 euro excess on the rental a few times.
- The food. It really is dreadful.
- Traditionally visitors have not done well when playing away in Flanders, as neatly illustrated by these photos from Tyne Cot Cemetary at Passchendale.
The good:
- Big on beer. And you can’t just order a beer here, you need to browse the menu. (Whereas twice we were told the wine list consisted of ‘a red one or a white one’ – it’s a beer market here).
- Wonderful cities like Ypres and Ghent.
But I think there might be one thing that swings me in the favour of Belgium – the relaxed attitude to road safety.
Now I come from the Nanny State of Victoria (it should be on our number plates) where driving is a wicked thing conducted by sinful people who must be punished! And where any flake in a Hi-Vis vest has power over all traffic. I have seen traffic slowed to 40 because some guy was working on the footpath.
In Belgium they are more in favour of the driver. Note below we had to slow to 110 because there was roadworks. Not 40, but 110. Because cruising speed is 130 and trucks are obliged to stay in the outside lane.
Now as you can see, the rental was a manual. The gearbox was like a wooden spoon in porridge and it had floaty suspension, so it was perfectly designed for tight, cobbled streets. But driving it around the dozens of roundabouts was harder than Chinese algebra. But it would happily nip along at 130 and the sky did not fall in, nor were there blazing piles of carnage along the highways. It seems grownups in modern cars can actually drive faster that we did in 1972 when tyres were cross ply’s and brakes were drums.
So all things considered I have to agree that Belgium is a great little place.