A few years ago, I took a young girl to Ypres to understand history. I cannot remember exactly - I think she was aged 9 or 10 then. We passed the gate and visited one of the cemeteries on the outskirts of the town. We stayed in a new Crowne Plaza hotel in Liège created out of various ancient buildings.
My family visited the Plains of Abraham, where the battle that led to the fall of Quebec was fought in 1759. English General Wolfe died towards the end of the battle, and French General Montcalm was wounded, dying a couple of days later.
@JimboSaturn In the First World War the destruction or reprisals were still military grounded, but in the Second World War it was all because of the ideology. In the First we were near to starving, in the Second near to everyone was taken for forced larbour in Germany. One day they forced into my mom's family home looking for my uncles. They took my underage aunt instead. My granddad when he got home in the evening took straight after her. I seem to remember that he found her in a railway station that got bombed at the time.
What do you call "real personal connection"? If the battle was somehow important to your country, I'd say that's close enough. If it was momentous enough for world history, that's pretty close too
@ImperialAerosolKidFromEP A whole country can't have a real connection to what happened here like no whole country was in the resistance during the last world war.
I don’t go out of my way to visit famous battle sites, war related places and have been to cities that were under siege or captured around the world. I have been to many. In London I went to the Savoy because it is so many books, TV shows and movies.
@Thinkerbell Perhaps she's sad because her husband or son was called up. The soldiers in the picture were probably from the 3rd Line Regiment. There was also a school for cavalry in the town. I've seen a few pics of those too. In 1914 the regiment fought in the battles of Grimde, Leuven and during the retreat of the field army to Antwerp and the river Yser. Because of the massive losses it had to be temporarily merged with the 23rd Line Regiment whose soldiers were mainly from Ostend.
The photo below shows German uhlans racing through the town of Ypres in that summer season. They didn't stay though because ultimately British Household cavalry pushed them out. German units took position on the hills around the town where they basically stayed for the next four years. I only feel that some knowledge of what happened before is necessary before joining the next coach touring the old battlefields. Some respect of the country and people who actually live there too.
Tourism helps to support the maintenance of war cemeteries and other memorials which were of great importance to thousands of people while they were still alive. I feel more comfortable about interest in these sites than I do about mass tourism in Poland's concentration camps.
@SunshineGirl They don't actually because the maintenance of the cemeteries are all paid for by the countries envolved. Even the German war cemeteries in Flanders are maintained and funded by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (that's the German War Graves Commission).
