Day 12 Wednesday 12 April 2017

Dear reader, I have been gently chastised for not providing detailed descriptions of my food and drink.  You may recall that I arrived in Ypres in Belgium yesterday, well Ypres is world renowned for its prawn croquettes.  Some readers may recall that during my last visit to Ypres I became slightly obsessed with prawn croquets.  So last night I decided that I would have prawn croquettes for my entree and they were delicious, two deep fried croquets sharing a plate with a little salad.  The ony unfortunate part is that the prawns themselves are ugly little grey wormy things and the restaurants insist on putting them around the plate as a garnish.

For main course I had a traditional Flemish beef stew, this is served in an iron casserol thing and was accompanied by chips (with mayonaise of course) and another salad.  This also was delicious and extremely filling.  Both courses were accompanied by a V & T for starters and a pitcher of the house red, both most acceptable.

Now that is out of the way lets get back to the real business at hand.  Today I decided that I would revisit the Messines battlefield.  Messines is a great battlefield to visit, because if you are standing on the Messines ridge (the high ground held by the Germans) the whole battlefield is laid out before you.  This is also the first major battle fought by the Australian 3rd Division and most importantly it is a battle that we won.

Now, this is a battlefield

Messines was a lead up to the battles of 3rd Ypres (which turned into a disaster, more of that tomorrow), and used a tactic known as 'bite and hold'.  Instead of trying to achieve a massive breakthrough and gallop all the way to Berlin the British generals decided to attack and advance in small stages.  Attack, hold the territory against the German counter attacks, bring up your artillery and attack again and repeat until you had achieved your objectives.

My grandfather's battalion, the 40th AIF, as part of the 3rd Division was an integral
part of this attack and achieved their objectives with, for the time, minimal casualties.

I followed some of the 40th battalion's advance through Ploegsteert Wood (or Plugstreet to the British and Australians) although it was difficult as much of the wood is in private hands and access is limited.  As I was walking through the forest there was nobody else around and I recalled the description from the 40th btn history of their approach of the front line through the wood.  It was described as a warm and humid night, very dark, and the Germans started to shell the British  support areas.  The shells went plop, plop, plop and at first the Australians thought that they were duds, then they realised that they were gas shells, so they had to put their gas masks on and continue their advance.  The 40th lost a number of men that night even before they reached the front line.

Ploegsteert Wood

I visited a number of other sites of interest in the Messines, Ploegsteert area including the Ploegsteert experience. This is a relatively new museum, oops sorry interpretive centre that has a small but well presented range of audio visual presentations and battlefield artifacts.  The staff were very helpful with some queries I had and happily spent some time with me trying the sort out some discrepancies in places and locations on the battlefield.

Well that is enough for now, have drinks in the bar at the Novotel, Jeffe Blonde, to be exact.

A cow (for no reason)