I believe in the early stages of planning our trip the whole point of it was to escape the cold of winter in Canada and go to Asia for the worst of it then go up to Europe just as it was warming up there and by the time we flew back to Canada it would be well into summer. But sadly, the past few days’ weather wise it’s been pretty dodgy and I don’t think being in muddy, damp northern Belgium would help. I wonder what it was like 100 years ago during the First World War when the Germans were invading northern Belgium trying to take back the land that the Belgians and Germans had been fighting over for many years. For the record, my facts may be horribly wrong so if you’re really feeling historical you can go look up Passchendaele on Wikipedia. But back to the point.
Pictures from the internet!
Britain and their colonies (New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and Australia) and Belgians built trenches from the River Rhine to the ocean which is almost 200 km of trenches. The Germans and British both had trenches all along those 200 km on both sides, about 100 meters apart. The fighting lasted for about four years and in that time the British had sent thousands of men from their colonies to help with the war effort and many of them ended up killed or missing. Now, you may say “Why are you writing about the First World War?” Well it may be because I’m feeling a little historical and I just wrote about what I know. No, I’m not particularly feeling historical at the moment. It’s because we went to the site in Passchendaele, Belgium where some of the worst parts of trench warfare in World War 1 happened. There they have reconstructed some trenches and bunkers that would have been used in the First World War. They also had an interesting museum about that area in the First World War. In the museum they had many things including artillery shells, old uniforms, and guns used in the war. Personally, I think I learned more from the museum than I would from the Wikipedia page.
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