P. Ferguson image, August 2018.
Thread Three
We awake to the sound of church bells announcing that our day is to begin. Refreshed and reinvented, our breakfast and table furnishings delight the soul as I continue to refine a short piece for the Western Front Association.
Our day takes us to the In Flanders Fields Museum where the current temporary exhibit Traces of War provides an engrossing and not unwieldy examination of First World War archaeology. Taking the bus to Zonnebeke, I at long last remember to photograph a Canadian artillery plaque anchored to an exterior wall of the church. We visit at the Zonnebeke Research Centre and then turn towards the Memorial Museum where, yet again, one always finds something new to focus upon.
Returning to Ieper (Ypres) aboard the number 94 bus, we attend the Last Post ceremony, meeting new friends and where I truly begin to understand the powerful symbolism of the 90th anniversary of the British Legion Great Pilgrimage. This year’s journey, by thousands of pilgrims, in commemoration of the last 100 days of the Great War, is a marvel of logistics and will be rewarding for all who attend here this eighth day of August.
After a day and a half of heat we are caught, at the end of the day, in a storm, the lightning – as if flares – and the roar of thunder – as if artillery. The Cloth Hall lights up time and time again as the sheets of lightning bask the building in a familiar glow of torment. Knowing what this building has endured and how it has risen reborn to Ieper, it is a gift to us all who seek an understanding of peace from conflict.
As we walk the rain-refreshed path back to our Ieper home I remind myself again, it’s better when it rains, these tears of heaven.
——-SNIP——-
Previously published Pipes of War website, 7 August 2018