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Tyne Cot cemetery in Flanders
Among the Commonwealth soldiers who fought in Europe during World War One, more than 60,000 Canadian expeditionary forces fell in the trenches of Flanders and northern France. Visiting the Canadian battlefields from Brussels makes for a thought-provoking trip back in time.
Vimy is just over the border from Brussels into France, now a sleepy rural backwater but in WWI it was the focus of fierce fighting in the Battle of Arras, where Canadian troops won a decisive battle over the Germans in 1917; visitors tour the trenches and then head for the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, whose stark white spires dominate the flat French landscape.
The peaceful location of St. Julien Canadian Memorial near Langemark in Belgium belies the brutality of the battles that raged around it. More than 2,000 victims of the first gas attacks of WWI are commemorated here; among tranquil gardens and under the shadow of the Brooding Soldier memorial statue, this is a place for quiet reflection.
Tyne Cot Cemetery is the biggest from WWI, with more than 13,000 Commonwealth soldiers honored here. The serried ranks of neat crosses stand in lines against the rolling fields of rural Belgium; the cenotaph at the heart of the cemetery honors more than 35,000 fallen soldiers whose bodies have never been recovered. There’s also a hard-hitting museum at Tyne Cot with displays of uniforms, letters, photos and weaponry illustrating the hardship of life in the trenches.
Every trip to the battlefields of Flanders should end with a visit to the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, followed by the deeply emotional Last Post service at the town’s stately marble Menin Gate, which takes place daily at 8 p.m.
For Canadian visitors to Normandy in northern France, it’s also possible to tour World War II sites at Juno Beach, Bény-sur-Mer War Cemetery where thousands of Canadian soldiers are buried, and Ardenne Abbey where Canadian soldiers also lost their lives.
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