NCL Cruise Day 2 - In Bruges - In Flanders Fields Itself

 We took the bus to the Essex Farm Cemetery.

 The cemetery has the bodies of many of those who died during the Ypres battles.

The West Yorkshire Regiment had a lot of its soldiers buried in Essex Farm.

 As always in First World War cemeteries, there lie the unknowns.

Beside the cemetery is a bunker complex used for medical operations near the front lines.

The bunker, on the backside of a hill from the battlefront, is dark and incredibly cramped, with some spaces no larger than your wingspan.  

Sandbags from the bunker line the road across from the bunker entrances.  The sandbags have since been filled with cement rather than sand but the bags themselves date back to the First World War.

 

It was at this bunker, that Major (then later Lt. Col) John McRae, medical officer of the 1st Brigade Canadian Field Artillery,  during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 wrote "In Flanders Fields" after witnessing the burial of his friend in the cemetery. Due to shelling and the passage of time, the location of the grave of his friend has been lost.

A plaque bearing a copy of the poem, in his handwriting, stands by the bunker.

Lest we forget.