Landscape and Memory
Brian James revisits Ypres, where new ways of commemorating the events of the First World War are enthralling visitors of all generations.
Stories of the great battles that shaped our world cannot be just lists of dates, causes and consequences. They must also recall the men who fought and the places where they died. Very few of the soldiers who endured the four years of obscene slaughter which made the fluctuating Battle of Ypres a benchmark of the First World War are still alive. But the footprint of their struggle is an indelible imprint on the land and deserves preservation.
That, at least, is the idea behind this year’s initiative by the Flanders Field Museum – already one of the most innovative of all battlefield memorials. ‘The Last Witness’ is a reference to the land itself, once a sea of pockmarked mud and rubble, resting place of 500,000 dead, now miraculously veneered by gentle farmland. Yet almost every hedgerow, ridge and copse has a story to tell.
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