Flanders Fields Museum and Tyne Cot Cemetery

On Sunday, December 29, 2019 we went to church in Ghent, Belgium.  We all expected this branch to be a small congregation, but we were delightfully surprised to have so many people in attendance.  We were greeted at the door, given headsets to hear the talks in English and were also able to attend an English Sunday School class.  There were over 50 people at church besides our group of eight senior missionaries.  It was an enjoyable and spiritual sabbath-day service!

After church we went to the town of Ypres-leper, Belgium.  In Ypres-leper we visited the  Flanders Fields Museum. We spent over an hour wandering around looking at the different WWI museum displays.  

We left the Flanders Field Museum and drove to Tyne Cot Cemetery.  Here we met a Latter-day Saint family who recognized us by our missionary name tags.  The mother of the group taught school and gave us a very informative tour.  Tyne Cot is a British cemetery with thousands of graves and many unknown soldiers' graves - unknown to men, but "known unto God".    

Some of the bloodiest battles of World War I took place in the areas of northern France and southwest Belgium known as Flanders.  As we visited this peaceful place, we thought of our Canadian grandchildren who celebrate a week in November focusing on Remembrance Day.

  
Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November to recall the end of hostilities formally ending World War I "at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month".

The poem In Flanders Fields was written by John McCrae, a Canadian doctor as he worked in the field dressing wounds and looking out at the fields of graves. Poppies grow well in soil that has been disturbed, therefore they grow in large numbers on battle fields. The red color of their petals brings to remembrance lives lost in conflict.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high.

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.

As we left Tyne Cot Cemetery we were determined to see some of the locations of "trench" warfare in Belgium.  As night fell, we didn't find the trenches, but we were able to find another peaceful and beautiful cemetery as the sun was setting.

   "They shall not grow old, as we are that left shall grow old:  age shall not weary them, nor years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them."  Laurence Binyon "Ode to Remembrance"