In Flanders Fields

Six weeks ago we began our European trip with a tour of Normandy's D-Day beaches. The decaying pill-boxes and rusting Mulberry harbour are the only remains of that horrific day in June '44.














The American cemetery with its row upon row of crosses reminded us of the scale of those killed that day. In Australia, we have no such cemeteries, since we are fortunate to not have had large-scale war on our own lands. But seeing these memorials made me be grateful for life.





Yesterday we visited Ypres and the fields of Flanders. Again we took a tour and witnessed the rows of crosses. However, the number of cemeteries is much more numerous here - to commemorate the half a million young lives killed on Belgium's fields.




We stood where Canadian surgeon poet John McCrae wrote in May 1915:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Each year I have listened to those speeches of the horrors of war at Anzac Day. But somehow the rows of crosses has sunk the message home in a way never felt before.

At the end of our trip tomorrow, we are to board a ferry at Dunkirk to have our own evacuation across the Channel to return to England shores.
I am now ready to go home.