Armistice Day 2014

Ironmongery from WW1 is now arranged artfully in the garden at Hooge Crater and the deep craters themselves turned into lakes in a hotel garden.

I took these photos during a visit earlier this year to the Flanders battlefields of World War 1 around the Ypres Salient.

There is nothing like being in a place to help understand past events. My overwhelming impressions were twofold:

• what a waste of resources and lives
• how young were those men of many nations who died in Flanders fields

Tyne Cot Cemetery

Langemark Cemetery

part of Falls the Shadow sculpture in Passchendaele Museum

2 minutes silence is observed in many parts of the world today to mark the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 when the guns fell silent at the end of the 'Great War', bringing peace of a sort but certainly not an end to war or the situations and attitudes that lead to war. Sometimes the only appropriate response to such horrors is silence, then prayer, then action for peace. But first - the silence - introduced in this video with the Last Post. (Pity about the spelling of Remembrance!)

Photos: my own