Tuesday was both emotionally and physically exhausting. I visited the crypt of my ancestor, saw where my family fought, and got a better idea of the real extent of the war. Before reading this post I suggest going my other post called “Our Family History” and reading the part about our family in World War 1 and Adele of Messines.

I was driven to the first tour by one of the Facebook volunteers, who helped me out a lot during the rest of the week. We arrived at the tour early, so I had a chance to meet everyone. All the people that were there were either New Zealanders or Australians who had come over especially for this week. I met several people from the FB page, as well as Martin O’Connor – the man from NZ Pilgrimmages Trust who had arranged everything for me and was running the tour with Steven Reynaert. Martin was a really nice man and I spent a lot of time with him during the week.

The first tour I attended was “In the Footsteps of the New Zealanders” (run by the Trust with Messines), where we retraced the New Zealand fighters tracks during the Battle Of Messines over the ridge of Messines. It was a freezing cold day and the wind was howling so, unfortunately, I couldn’t hear every word of the tour, but I did hear enough. The first place we went to was a few fields of rolling hills. It was there that the NZ Rifle Brigade fought on the 5th June 1917, and possibly there that my Great Great Uncle Cyril’s body still rests. To hear about the insane struggles the soldiers went through seemed almost unreal as the land looked so healthy. The Battle of Messines was a huge success, and despite the casualties, it was a huge step forward for the allies.
Martin said that even today, 100 years later, farmers still find weapons, bombshells, and human remains scattered on their farm. For example 2 years ago a herd of grazing cows triggered a live mine that hadn’t gone off during the war. Every day a bomb disposal truck drives around Flanders and people leave cardboard boxes of shells they found outside their driveway. Each Tuesday and Thursday it’s all chucked into a big hole and blown up. Just 2 weeks ago a farmer turned up half a dozen rifles!

We then made our way to the top of the ridge to the New Zealand Memorial. There we saw a few German bunkers that were made from concrete. Apparently they were made in Germany and then sent via train and rebuilt at the site. The German bunkers were a lot stealthier than those of New Zealand and they are found on many farms in the area. We continued tracing the New Zealanders footsteps through the town of Messines. We stopped by “the New Zealand Soldier” and everyone took a picture. Anyone who visits Messiness takes a photo with the soldier uploads it to a FaceBook page. Sir Peter Blake and the NZ Governor General and many more important people have had their photo taken with him.

Afterward was the part I’d been waiting for, the church of Messines (Read my family history blog to see why it’s so special to me)! It was a beautiful church with a huge organ and high ceilings. We walked down a small stairway into the crypt, where the stone of Adele Of Messines lay (my ancestor). Dad had always talked about it, so when I finally got to, I broke down and cried. I couldn’t believe how emotional I became! Later, Dad made a joke during our skype session and said I was emotional because she was the first family member I had seen in 6 months 😀 Martin gave me a candle to light for her and a nice elderly woman called Maryann held my hand.

After visiting the Church we went to the Museum of Messines and looked around the exhibitions. There were many before and after photos and the difference between them was so incredible you couldn’t even tell it was taken at the same place! Our final stop was at the NZ Memorial for the Missing. By this point the rain was relentless and we were running to the Memorial – some people had dropped out because the conditions were so bad. I ran around the memorial looking for Cyril’s name and when I found it I teared up all over again. I decided to come back the next day and place a wreath of Poppies beside his name.
And that concluded our first tour!

Everyone traveled back to Ypres to have lunch before the Tour of Passchendaele held by Freddy Declerk (former chairman of the Memorial Museum Passchendaele and the Passchendaele Society 1917 and an honorary captain in the Royal New Zealand Navy). I was super lucky to given a free pass because everyone else was charged 50 EUR. Everyone jumped into their cars and followed Freddy’s around the Passchendaele Battlefield, including the 5 Battles of Ypres. For those of you who don’t know (research it, it’s important), the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele is considered to be “one of the most horrific battles of the first World War, with more than half-a-million casualties for a territorial gain of merely eight km”. It was in this Battle that my Great Grandfather Clem was injured and sent to England. We stopped at many fields and Freddy would explain where all the soldiers were stationed at what times and their progression. Freddy was very blunt about the facts and didn’t sugar coat anything that happened, he said no words could ever describe what those soldiers went through.

We zoomed through the Memorial Museum of Passchendaele, if you are interested in WW1, then this Museum is A MUST. It was absolutely amazing and the detail blew me away. Unfortunately we were very time limited and virtually ran through it. A section of the museum was an exact replica of the English trenches and we were able to see their living conditions during the war. Because of the gas, the trenches had large pieces of fabric over each entrance-way to roll down incase there was a gas attack.

After the museum, we continued to drive through the fields of Passchendaele. We stopped at one of the largest Commonwealth cemeteries in the world – the CWGG Tyne Cot Cemetery. The cemetery was stunning, huge beds of roses and poppies were planted by the graves- a shocking 11,956 graves in total. Whenever there was an unknown soldier the plark said: “known to God”. Freddy said that there was a 50% chance Cyril was in one the cemeteries as an unidentified soldier.

We then went to a normal looking field, which was nothing but. Here, on October 12th, 1917 the most tragic day in New Zealand’s history took place. The NZ Division launched an attack to take the Village of Passchandaele. It was a huge failure and resulted in 2,700 deaths, 846 of which occurred in under four hours. “Out of all the nations involved in WW1, New Zealand made the most significant sacrifice in terms of population: over 40,000 soldiers were wounded and more than 18,000 killed.” It was at this field that Freddy gave each of us a piece of shrapnel from that very same battle. Up until then, I’d been looking for a souvenir to remember this by, but nothing could be more meaningful and perfect.

On the way back to Ypres we dropped into a farm shed full of weapons, old bombs (some of them still live) and all sorts of other things. The Bomb disposal truck that Martin had talked about came around and picked up some bits and bobs, but this farmer decided to keep a lot of his finds. It scared me how much rubble remains after 100 years.

By the end of the day, I knew so many people from the tours that I was never alone. I went out to eat dinner with a group of them and I had the best duck ever with an orange sauce. We talked for ages about each others family history in the War and I didn’t get back to the BnB until midnight but I had to call Dad and tell him about everything!