After our morning tour of Bruges, we traveled to the city of Ypres, now known as the “City of Peace.” We learned about the Belgian battles of WWI, then known as The Great War, in the interactive Flanders Field Museum. to learn about the Great War (WWI). The museum had outfitted mannekins “talking” to us of their lives and service. The museum was dim and piled with the abandoned tools and weapons of war.
It was a beautiful day for touring the surrounding cemetery, which made the sad waste of young lives represented there even more devastating.
We stopped at the site of a trench where a reenactment had just taken place. Just as we walked past, a young reenactor playing a medic dropped his historic medical kit, spilling its contents and breaking glass. My heart ached for their embarrassment, but I couldn’t help taking a picture of them picking up the remains.
The most touching sight for me that day was the group of schoolchildren sitting on the monument steps. Their teacher said they were writing letters to the young soldiers in the cemetery.
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