The Platoon Experience on Sunday was an amazing opportunity. It was surprising to see how much we were all complaining about our boots, rifles and packs after only a couple of hours when soldiers did this for days at a time. I enjoyed being able to hear the different stories of the Australian soldiers too just to personalize the experience even more. My soldier was Cecil Percy Mallet, a stretcher bearer, whose grave I found at Lijssenhoek Cemetery yesterday. Having him as my story was fitting as I was playing the role of a medic, along with Hannah, Jordan and Patrick, during the march.
Today we visited the In Flanders Fields Museum which for myself was by far the best museum we have been to so far. I loved the Platoon Experience at the Passchendaele museum but this museum was beautiful and chilling. The displays were set up in a very theatrical way, bringing the war to life right in front of your eyes. The artifacts were matched with sound bytes that suited each scene. The gas mask display was by far my favourite. It was accompanied by Wilfrid Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est, and that particular part of the exhibit sent shivers down my spine. My second favourite display was the war room where there were glass floors revealing what the ground around the trenches and in No Man's Land would have looked like, strewn with burned boots and destroyed helmets. The room played recreated footage from the war, and was incredibly vivid.
I'm loving being able to connect the artifacts to cemeteries we've visited and battles we've learned about. For example, I did my individual soldier presentation today and it was only last night that I realized he was killed during the Battle of Gravenstafel, when mustard gas was first used by the Germans. It was the same at the museum today when I saw the original cross from the grave of Peter Kollwitz, the soldier commemorated with the statue The Grieving Parents at one of the German cemeteries we visited. We also saw the site of the Christmas Truce, before seeing statues and an exhibit about it today at the museum.
This afternoon it was nice to have some off time though, just to relax and do a little shrapnel shopping with all my new friends. It's amazing how here you can walk from a clothing store, or restaurant, into a shop full of World War I merchandise. Ypres is beautiful, and I'm rather sad about leaving tomorrow but I can't wait to rest my legs on the bus a little and then finally get to Lille!
-Erin McKenzie
Hannah and I as medics
Me, Patrick, Jordan and Hannah with our stretcher after the march.
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