Ypres was famed in medieval Europe for the quality of its much sought after linen. The beautiful Lakenhalle is a monument to the wealth once generated by the industry. It is also reflected in the 13th and 14th century Saint Martin’s cathedral and the medieval buildings surrounding the Grote Markt. Its history would make Ypres a place to visit in its own right, in truth though, it’s mostly a byword for the horrors of the First World War.
Look at photos of Ypres in 1918 and you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was a place without a future. Four years at the centre of one of the major theatres of the war, and the destruction was almost complete. Visiting it today, as I’ve done several times over the course of the last year, it’s impossible not to ponder the monumental efforts that were made to bring Ypres back to life.
Ypres was at the centre of three extraordinarily bloody battles. The First Battle of Ypres was fought during the early stages of the war in October and November 1914. By the time it concluded the stalemate of trench warfare that would characterise the remainder of the conflict had become the norm. Ypres found itself in the middle of a salient held by British and French troops that bulged into the German lines.
Unhappily for Ypres and Allied soldiers in the salient, the Germans held the high ground overlooking it. Ypres was an easy target for artillery, summed up in the name given by British soldiers to a transport junction on the edge of town: Hellfire Corner. It was one of the most deadly places on the Western Front and claimed thousands of lives as soldiers headed to the front. A tiny monument marks the spot today.
Close to a quarter of a million Belgian, British, French and German soldiers were killed or wounded in the 1914 battle, but those numbers would soon be horrifyingly surpassed. The Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915 would see more destruction of the town as German forces tried to crush the salient, but it became infamous for the first ever use of poison gas and flamethrowers as weapons.
When the war ended on November 11, 1918, it is said that a person on horseback could see unhindered across the town. The Lakenhalle, or Cloth Hall, which had been the largest non-religious Gothic building in Europe in 1914, was rubble. Yet a decade after the reconstruction began, the Lakenhalle and much of the rest of Ypres’ medieval centre had been restored to how it looked before the war. A phoenix from literal flames.
If you didn’t know the history, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Although, if Winston Churchill, the then Secretary of State for War, had got his way, Ypres would have been preserved as a ruin, an eternal memorial to the suffering and sacrifice endured. His vision was rejected by the Belgian authorities. I arrived early in the morning and walked along the peaceful city walls.
There are several war cemeteries in Ypres, and dozens more nearby, none more poignant than that overlooking the water next to the Lille Gate. I followed the old walls to the Menin Gate, a huge war memorial located at a point where hundreds of thousands of soldiers passed by en route to the front. It is inscribed with the names of 54,000 officers and soldiers whose graves are unknown.
It’s a moving place at twilight. A short walk into the centre you reach the Grote Markt. The impressive Lakenhalle is home to the excellent In Flanders Fields Museum which narrates the history of the war through the lives of people involved. It was summer and the lovely town centre was busy, so I strolled along the Yser Canal to where Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae worked as a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres.
Canadian officer, McCrae, wrote one of the greatest poems of the war, In Flanders Fields, a heartfelt lament penned after burying a friend who died in battle. His small dressing station is dug into the side of the canal banks, here doctors worked under fire at the height of the conflict. Essex Farm cemetery is nearby, as is a memorial to the sacrifice of the West Riding Division from Yorkshire.
Testimony to the colossal scale of the world’s first industrialised war, you can’t go very far without coming across sights like this. McCrae himself had the misfortune to die of pneumonia away from the front. Even today, the sense of futility remains entirely intact.
Notes from Camelid Country 
Your last sentence encompasses it all.