December 2nd 2011. Another beautiful day in Flanders fields. Baldrick and myself have just returned from visiting the few remaining cemeteries in the Messines area that we haven’t had the opportunity to visit before. Most of the photos we took today, along with many others, you will get to see sometime in 2012 (correction: 2013) when ‘A Tour of Messines’ comes to a computer near you, but in the meantime, here’s a sneak preview.
For Angela.
A mile and a half to the west of Ploegsteert Village lies the rarely-visited Maple Leaf Cemetery. Continue reading
This post is designed to be read as part of the ‘Tour of Ploegsteert Wood’, so if you are reading it as a stand-alone post I suggest you disregard all references to the ‘Tour’, as they will make no sense. Alternatively, just read the whole ‘Tour’ anyway. Which does make sense. Anyway, before we visit the Ploegsteert Memorial I suggest a short detour. We are standing at what was once known as Hyde Park Corner, with the road from Mesen (Messines), down which we have just come, in the background, and the Memorial itself a few hundred yards behind us. This CWGC sign points us down a side road that briefly wends its way through the Bois de la Hutte, as the the wood to the west of the Mesen-Ploegsteert road is called, before emerging on the far side where we will find Underhill Farm Cemetery, once a burial ground for dressing stations that occupied two buildings situated nearby.
Looking north from the entrance to Prowse Point Military Cemetery towards Messines, or Mesen as it is now called, Messines Church visible on the horizon in the centre. To get your bearings, particularly if you haven’t arrived here via the link from ‘A Tour of Ploegsteert Wood – Part One’, for much of the War the front lines ran from left to right through the field directly in front of us; Messines itself was in German hands until June 1917 and was of course lost again during the German advance in 1918.
You may not believe it, but the updates to ‘A Tour of Ploegsteert Wood’ that I promised you a while back really have finally begun, and a new Part Nine has been added where we visit the British burials in Ploegsteert Village churchyard, and pay our respects at the village war memorial (above). Over the next few months many more new photographs will be inserted into the other parts of the Tour, and we will also find time to visit the CWGC cemeteries to the south of Ploegsteert (such as Motor Car Corner Cemetery – see photo below). Personally, I’d come back every so often to check on what’s happening. But what do I know? You may have better things to do.
Our final stop along this short stretch of the river is the communal cemetery in the town of Menen (yes, this was once called Menin, and yes, if you head north west from here some eleven miles you will find yourself at the Menin Gate in Ieper).
Geluwe, like the other towns we have visited, was occupied by the Germans for most of the First World War, and, again like the others, was totally destroyed during the course of it.
