Part Five: Excursion to "Flanders Fields" | Conscience and Peace Tax International

Program

‘Flanders Fields’ is the name of battle fields of World War I, after the famous poem of the Canadian doctor John McCrae:

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

between the crosses row on row…

9.00: Departure by bus from Notre Dame du Chant d'oiseau
10.45: Visit to
- Tyne Cot Cemetery in Passendale: biggest British war cemetery on the continent: 11.956 graves,
- remnants of a German bunker.
- The battle of Passendale (July 31 till November 10, 1917) cost half a million dead and wounded. Gains: a few kilometres of territory.
  - We died in hell. They called it Passendale.
11.30: Visit to the Essex Farm War Cemetery (1.185 graves),
- with restored dug-out where J McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields.
12.00: Free for lunch.
14.00: Visit to
- Museum In Flanders Fields (2-3 hours): explanations in four languages,
- includes the visit: of a temporary exhibit Belgian War Refugees 1914-1918.
- Also go to the Cloth Hall and Belfry (built 1260-1304, rebuild after WW I), symbols of the power of the cloth guilds;
- and the renaissance City Hall, built against the side-façade of the Cloth Hall;
- and the bookshop.
18.00: Free for dinner.
19.45: Gathering at the The Menin Gate
- (with the names of some 55.000 Commonwealth soldiers whose bodies are missing).
- Daily ceremony (15 minutes) at the Menin Gate with the Last Post at 20h.
Afterwards: Walk on the city walls (from various periods, but mostly built by Vauban around 1680).
Night in hotels in the historic center of Ieper.

9.00: Departure by bus.
10.15: Visit to
- the Museum IJzertoren (Tower of the river Ijzer):
  - by elevator up to the top floor of this 22-storied tower with panorama of the now green fields to be compared with the pictures of mud and despair in the same fields just after the war.
  - Excellent museum of WWI and the Flemish emancipation movement during the 20^th century (one topic per floor coming down the stairs).
  - Explanations in four languages.
12.30: Lunch.
13.45: Visit to the Death Trench (restored): a unique site.
14.45: Visit to the German war cemetery at Vladso with Käthe Kollwitz's Mourning Parents.
15.15: Stop in Koekelare
- for refreshments
- + visit to the Käthe Kollwitz Tower (with her drawings).
16.15: Departure for Brussels. Arrival in Brussels around 18.00.