TOM MORGAN'S YPRES BATTLEFIELD GUIDE

First Visit to Ypres

Everyone remembers his first visit to Ypres. This is the story of mine.

It was many years ago, and I was travelling to Ypres by car.  Although it was August, when the evenings should have been long and sunny, it was very downcast, and so rainy that it was almost dark when I set off from the coast. As the brightly-lit seaside streets were left behind, I found myself peering into driving rain as the headlights barely managed to pick out the edge of the road as it wound between tiny villages whose names were completely unknown to me.  Everywhere seemed to be closed, and dark. Eventually, I began to see roadsigns pointing out the names of villages which I had seen before in books, and I knew that I was getting near to Ypres. The rain began to abate slightly, and this made the sky slightly visible. I could see some differences in the colours, which were still mostly shades of unwelcoming grey, apart from a distant redness - a sign that there was a well-lit town in the distance.  This town, if my calculations were correct, must be Ypres, and it must be some ten miles away. I drove on.

Although I had never been there, I felt a great familiarity with Ypres.  I had been reading about the place for years. When I first became interested in the Great War I was still a small child, listening to the stories of elderly relatives, and I soon learned that there was a place called "Eepers" and that nearby were other places with strange names, like "Hill Sixty" and "Hellfire Corner." In my early teens I read as much as I could about it, and for me, Ypres had come to typify the Great War with its images of horror, endurance, steel helmets and, above all, mud. I wasn't to know, at the time, that although Ypres was a monumental place in the history of the war, there was more to the Great War than any single place.

However, I knew a lot about Ypres.  When I got there, I would know, roughly, in which direction to head if I wanted to go towards the trench-lines.  Above all I wanted to see Hellfire Corner and Hill Sixty.  On this particular evening there would only be time for Hellfire Corner.  This was a one-off visit, snatched by good fortune from the tail-end of a rainy day when not much else had been possible.  I would be back later, but this time I needed to find the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing. I wanted to attend "last Post" at 20:00.  From the Menin Gate I knew which road I would have to take to bring me to Hellfire Corner, and I knew, from photographs, what Hellfire Corner looked like, so I would be able to recognise it. There was  (in those days) a crossroad and a railway-crossing just beyond it.

The red glow in the sky was getting closer. The rain wasn't so bad now, more of a thick, annoying  drizzle than the downpour I had come through so far. Beside the road the houses still looked like small, village houses, but there were more of them, and the spaces between them were getting smaller.  Then the ditch at the side of the road gave way to a proper pavement, with a kerb and drain-covers and I knew that I was nearing the outskirts of Ypres.

Then trouble came.  Ahead, I could see that the road was closed.  There were barriers across it, and no signs to indicate any recommended diversionary route.  In those days, in Flanders, when the road was up, it was UP. The traveller was left to his own devices. (Things are better now, but not by much.)

The only option available to me was a right turn just before the barrier. I took this road and found myself in one of those new developments - a housing estate with a park-like layout, the houses sitting back from the road behind long, open drives through carefully-mown lawns. The road was narrow and twisted around, with lots of little offshoots. One of these seemed to be heading in what I considered the right direction, so I took it, but it veered off in quite the wrong direction after a few hundred yards, so I took another turning, then another. It was a very pleasant place to live, but it was a terrible place for me, as I quickly lost any sense of direction and finally found myself at a dead-end, with no option but to turn around.

As  I was doing this, I noticed a man leave one of the houses.  He had a raincoat on, and ran to his car.  While I reversed in the narrow street, he drove to the end of his drive, and flashed his headlights. I took this to mean that he was waiting for me to move ahead, which seemed a little unnecessary, as I was still struggling with the steering-wheel and was nowhere near to completing the final turn and driving off again. I looked again and saw that he had wound down his window and was beckoning me to follow him.  He had seen the British registration-plate on my car.  He knew the time - almost 20:00 and knew why I was in Ypres. He presumably knew about the road-closure and realised that I was lost.  I flashed my lights to show that I had understood and he drove a little way down the road and waited for me to finish turning in the road.  Then he led me out of the warren of residential streets.

We came to an area where the buildings were older, where the houses came right up to the pavements, with cars parked in the cramped streets. I saw shops, still open. It was still raining, but there were people about in the streets. There were dim streetlights.

Suddenly we literally burst into a dazzling area of light and space.  Glancing to my right I saw, for the first time, the enormous outline of the Cloth Halls, glistening wet in the glare of floodlights.  This was the Groote Markt - the Grande Place - the Market Square. The clock in the belfry said that it was ten minutes to eight.

My guide pulled into the car-parking area in the middle of the square and I followed and parked the car. I turned  in my seat, towards my friendly Belgian to see him leaning out of the car window, giving me a "thumbs up" sign.  He pointed towards and above me, so  I looked in that direction and saw, very close indeed, the floodlit Menin Gate at the end of a street leading out of the square.  I turned and waved.  He waved back, and then drove away, returning to whatever errand had brought him out of his house on that rainy evening. He disappeared from my sight, but remains in my memory.  Whoever he was, I wish I had had the chance to become his friend.

I got out of the car and experienced a feeling I knew well, but which was unfamiliar in that place and was one which I couldn't put a name to at the time.  I experienced it again a few days later when I walked through the front door of my house, and then I knew.  It was the feeling I get when I return home.

Well, I got to the Menin Gate with minutes to spare and, for the first time, I attended "last Post". There were about a dozen other people there - there were fewer visitors in Ypres then than there are now - and we stood looking at the names and listening to the piercing notes of the bugles. At either end of the great arch we could see the rain, almost every drop being thrown into sharp focus by the floodlights. It was as moving then as it has been every time since. I've no idea of how many times I've attended this simple ceremony, and find it difficult to recall individual visits from among so many.  But like everyone else, I remember the first visit, always.

Copyright © Tom Morgan, January, 2003

Return to the Ypres Diary Start Page to see the next available part of the Diary

Return to the Hellfire Corner Contents Section