Day 19: Ypres

Today we took a train over to the city of Ypres. This city was completely demolished by war destruction during the first World War, so pretty much all the city was completely reconstructed to look like it did back in the day. We received a very fascinating lecture on World War I as well as a city tour by Wounter Sinaeve.

Belgium had a rather unfortunate position during World War I. While they were a neutral country at the time, the Germans invaded France by going through Belgium. Why? The border directly between France and Germany was heavily guarded by French soldiers, so the only way to hit France was to go through Belgium. The Belgian army was taken completely by surprise, but they decided to fight back. They opened the dikes and completely flooded the area. This strategy worked: the Germans were stuck in the mud. Unfortunately, this also led to a standstill in the area since the French were not able to push the Germans back. An invasion that was supposed to take a few days lasted several years.

Ypres is a town of peace and...cats? Yes, there used to be a lot of cats in this town! Ypres was a town dedicated to the production and selling of luxury textiles. The basement of the current WWI museum used to be the depot for these textiles before being shipped off. There would be a lot of mice and rats in the basement, so Ypres released cats into the basement to take care of the rodents. When the textiles were shipped, they had another problem: there were way too many cats and kittens. The citizens of Ypres did what any rationally thinking group of people would do: they took the cats to the belfry and hurled them off the tower. They have cat parades every few years, and they also throw cats off the belfry during this festival! Not real ones, thankfully.

Cats everywhere are not amused.

With the portrayal of the Germans as "barbarians" and "evil", many young men were quick to enlist for service in the war that "would be over by Christmas". Even though you had to be 16-17 to sign up, there were many instances of 14-15 year olds who signed up and died in combat. Why would this be the case?

• The salary of a soldier was much higher than the one you could gain from a factory or other job.
• A new uniform that would look sharp and attract attention from girls must have been very exciting to hear about.
• Many young kids took this as an opportunity to travel to a country they had never seen before.

I should probably warn you that the following discussion on World War I uniforms and tactics is heavily laden with references to Team Fortress 2. If you're unfamiliar with the game or are just sick of my references, you should probably leave now.

First of all, the problems with the uniforms? They're not TF2 related, but I can totally relate with marching band uniforms. World War I started in the summer, and woolen uniforms get uncomfortably hot and sweaty underneath when it's warm out. While they are a blessing when it's cold, God forbid it start raining. The cloth used in uniforms would absorb a lot of the water, making the uniforms extremely heavy. There was also the problem that the WWI uniforms weren't exactly what you would consider camouflage, but I don't think Cal Band really has this problem.

JUST TRY AND TELL US APART.

Anyway, the war had come to a standstill. People began to wonder, how can we keep this war on the move again? As Wounter showed us, a rifle wasn't very practical to stay on the move--the relatively small amount of damage done as well as the long reload time just wasn't worth the risk. Engineers began to develop new forms of hand grenades to increase the amount of damage done from a distance. The first of the new models was a German stick grenade. The grenade would be lit at the wooden end and then thrown within the next five seconds to the opposite lines. It looked something like this.

Uh oh. What does this remind me of...

"A sober person would throw it." Indeed! Just so you know, the Demoman is one of my favorite characters to play. :)

The British developed the grenade model we're more familiar with: the Mills bomb. The design was actually very innovative: the lines of the grid were very thin so that upon explosion, the squares would fly out, acting as bullets and increasing the damage radius.

The Soldier has these grenades, but that shouldn't really be surprising.

Grenades were developed to include shrapnel and cause increased damage. A soldier fighting in WWI could now damage and/or take the lives of a few hundred in the trenches as opposed to a few targets.

Gas also became a new weapon. The Hague Convention of 1899 had been signed by the European countries, stating that "The Contracting Powers agree to abstain from the use of projectiles the object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." This didn't stop Germany from developing chemical warfare, though. After all, the Convention stated that the use of projectiles containing gas--there was nothing in it preventing the use of chemical gas entirely. OH GERMANY, YOU SO SNEAKY.

A man by the name of Fritz Haber developed chloride gas in 1915. It was very effective, as the gas was heavy enough to stay close to the ground but could still move freely in the direction of the wind. The chloride gas was highly effective: not only would it wipe out every living thing in no man's land, but hundreds of soldiers would suffocate from a seemingly harmless wind. You can imagine that this was probably very frightening.

There is NO WAY that you can stop that.

Of course, the opposition would begin to use this new weapon, as well as try to make it more deadly. There was also the question of how to prevent yourself from suffocating during a gas attack because honestly, how are you going to stop a cloud of gas? The suggestions given at the time were to:

1. Throw yourself on the ground, which was dumb considering the chloride gas just sinks anyway.
2. Hold your breath, but most human beings can't do that for a good half hour.
3. Hold a handkerchief to their nose and breathe through it, which would work for a short time, but wasn't entirely infallible.

Gas masks were thus developed. This was the moment that I realized I was going to have to use all the TF2 references.

We then got to walk through the interactive museum "In Flanders Fields". Our guide told us that the goal of this was to show that in the end, no one really "won" World War I. I think they did a pretty good job. I personally had to get through the museum really quickly: it encapsulated the pain felt by so many very well, and I honestly thought I was going to cry for some parts of it (like the Christmas Truce parts).

CURSE YOU EUROPEAN FILMS.

We then got to witness a tradition in Ypres: the Last Post, a bugle call performed at the Menin Gate every night since 1928. The only exception to this was the four year German occupation during World War II, when the tradition was banned. When the Polish liberated the city, the tradition resumed despite the fighting, kind of as a statement that the end of the war was coming.

One crazy train ride later, we made it back to Oostende. Today was a very eventful day.