Ypres was no different than the rest. It started with a stunning town hall and gorgeous surrounding buildings. We were impressed especially with the church right next to and behind city hall. We visited the tourist infor center to orient ourselves for our trips out to the various cemeteries, but had to run back to the car to pick up lunch (we packed one to help keep us on time and on track) and to comply with the parking laws of Belgium (e.g. feed the meter and put the receipt in viewing on the dashboard for all police to see.)
On the way back to the car, we went by the lovely church and I noticed a beautiful Celtic cross with flowers in front. I stopped to take a picture (the Irish in me couldn’t let it pass) and noted that it was a memorial to WWI erected in 1924. I didn’t think anything of it again until I noticed a postcard in a shop showing the condition of Ypres after the Great War (as all the monuments and headstones here refer to it.) Not only was the town truly leveled, but the big glorious Grand Place and the church I was admiring were non-existent. One post card, which I had to get, was of that same beautiful Celtic cross, the picture taken in almost the same place as I did, with nothing behind it.
I was truly shocked. I knew that western european towns had to rebuild substantially after WWI (and WWII, although that included a lot of eastern European towns as well) but I guess it had never been as stark a reality as it was when I saw that photo and realized the enormity of the task. History is something I love and am so grateful to be in a place where we can visit sites of significant world-changing events virtually daily. It takes on a new meaning, however, when the reality of the sacrifice of rebuilding life – normal everyday life – after such cataclysmic events comes into view. The comparison to Ground Zero in NY came to mind simply because it is the only one that I can relate to. It is now rebuilding, seven years later, but the difficulty of coming to agreement as to what should be there and the building delays have been thought provoking. And here we are, in a place that has had only 60+ years to rebuild entire nations and they have done it beautifully. We wouldn’t have known that the buildings we were admiring weren’t from the 17-18th Centuries had we not seen those pictures.
Ypres prides itself on being a town that promotes peace, and it is easy to understand why after visiting and starting to get an idea of the loss that they had to endure. Not just the people, which is a mind numbing amount, or the way of life, which I am sure was changed forever, but of the normalcy. Even when rebuilding the structures just as they were before the war, and that had to have taken a tremendous amount of time, they still wouldn’t be the same. Also, I know that there was devastation on the economies of all these countries after the war, so to rebuild these grand buildings in the old style not only cost, but cost a lot of what they didn’t have. It just really struck us, as we talked about it walking through town, that the rebuilding resulted in substantial sacrifice as well. Perhaps that was a way of healing, bringing everyone together – providing jobs and dignity, trying to pull a beloved past into an unsure future and sacrificing comfort and precious resources to see it done right. My understanding and appreciation of history grows the longer I am here, as well as my respect for those that lived it.
2 comments:
I have really enjoyed both of your historical and thoughtful posts. Thanks for sharing the stories, pictures and thoughts.
You wrote that very well, and I am thankful to get to see it through your eyes. I bet the folks who sacrificed so greaty were thinking more about future generations than about themselves, and look what a gift they gave us all -- not only in the buildings, but in their perseverance and faithfulness that we can all admire. It is truly inspiring.
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