I missed the lovely bus that would take me right from Charles de Gaulle to Arras for only 12 euro because of a bomb scare in Customs. I ended up taking the TGV to Lille for a whopping 67 euro, and Dad and Simon (my younger brother) came to pick me up. We continued up to Tyne Cot Cemetery in the Ypres Salient, which we hadn’t previously visited. In our past trips we have focused more on the Canadian sites because my great-grandfather had emigrated to Ontario in 1912 when he was 20.
In 2014 when we came for the Centenary of the beginning of the War, I discovered some wonderfully useful apps, including “Find a Grave” which is connected to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database. Murdo’s brothers were mostly in the War too, but they were all in British regiments as they remained in Scotland. Murdo’s youngest brother John had been declared “Missing, believed dead” in October 1917 after the Battle of Passchendaele (3rd Ypres). I used this app, “Find a Grave” to locate him (you need a little information because there were so many war dead) and we discovered that his name was on the Tyne Cot Memorial Wall.
For some reason, this memorial was more shocking than Thiepval, although it is much smaller. There are thousands of names on the walls, and since it is continuous and only about 8 feet tall there seem to be even more. It is a lovely memorial, on the “high ground”, meaning about 15 feet above the surrounding country. There remain two German machine gun posts, giant concrete bunkers that have held up very well to the years. Chunks are missing from the concrete, presumably from artillery or mortar hits, and you can look through the machine gun ports to the inside. Since the artery trenches that would have led to the entrances are all gone, you can only guess at where the entrances are, but on the left bunker there is a suspiciously large gap right where a door should be, that the grass doesn’t quite cover.
The main bunker is now underneath the cross and sword at the center of the memorial, and was taken by the Australians. Now the entrance to the bunker is marked with a laurel wreath of victory and a plaque commemorating the Australian victory and their bravery. There aren’t very many actual graves, and it wasn’t hard to notice that many of the original headstones have been replaced with marble. Perhaps as the concrete disintegrates they have been replacing them little by little? If so, that’s lovely.
Private John S. Nicolson was in the Gordon Highlanders. We found him without too much trouble.
When we were heading to the little museum attached to the site, I was very startled to hear a voice reciting names coming out of the bushes to the left. I realized after a moment that, of course! it was a recitation of the names of all those listed on the walls. It’s a rather eerie sensation, but the whole point of the Memorial and of the Centenaries is to remember those who sacrificed everything, as well as those who made it home but lived in hell for years.
We left feeling quite somber, and headed into Zonnebeke, home of the Passchendaele Museum, to sit and talk about it, completely surrounded by dozens of people all wearing Canada sweatshirts, jackets, scarves, etc. We had a quick bite and a Passchendaele Beer (odd? but I suppose making a buck off of all the Centenary tourists is legit?) and headed back down to Arras.
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