Piping Today
Oct/Nov 2007 #30
By Mike Paterson
On Saturday, 25 August, 2007 a four-metre high cross of Scottish granite was unveiled near the small town of Zonnebeke, Belgium: a memorial to the 560,000 Scots who fought and the 126,000 who fell during the First World War.
The new monument was designed by Dirk Uytterschout of Halle and made in Scotland by the Aberdeenshire firm of Fyfe Glenrock. On its base of battlefield bunker blocks, it rises to more than seven metres at Frezenberg, a slightly higher piece of ground that was captured on the opening day of the campaign — 31 July, 1917 — by the 15th Scottish Division. The Scottish entrenchments here soon defined the edge of start lines for further attacks.
Leading up to that first attack by nine divisions of the British Fifth Army, British guns poured 4.2 million shells into the German lines. This, together with German shelling and relentlessly heavy rain, saw the battlefield turn into a morass of sucking, glutinous mud, deep enough to drown men and mules. Rats and lice infested the battlefield and its stinking trenches. From the spring of 1915, German gas attacks compounded the horrors.
A few weeks after the first British advance, the 9th Scottish Division, reinforced by the 1 South African Brigade, took over the sector won by the 15th Division.
Their objective, the already devastated village of Passchendaele, lay just a few kilometres away across the open quagmire of shell-torn mud, enemy entrenchments, barbed wire, sniper fire and death-dealing machinegun bunkers. The 51st Highland Division was deployed a little to the north, near the village of Poelkapelle.
In 50 days of fierce fighting, the Scots advanced less than two miles, to Zonnebeke.
Before Passchendaele could be taken, the battered, depleted and exhausted Scottish troops had been relieved by Australians and New Zealanders and then by Canadian and Newfoundland troops. Many of these Commonwealth soldiers also had strong Scottish roots and links.
The 100 days of frightful attrition on this ground, known as the Ypres Salient, saw half a million British, Commonwealth and German soldiers killed or wounded. The Battle of Passchendaele became the bloodiest engagement of the First World War. Yard by cratered, bloodied yard, the British troops took their objective.
The ground finally won by 10 November, however, was given up the following spring. But by then the war was nearly over, Germany’s capacities to continue fighting having been debilitated — not least by the losses at Passchendaele — and Flanders was liberated in September that year. The war had erased all trace of five once-prosperous little rural villages in the area, and Ypres was devastated.
Ninety years on, rebuilding has restored these villages to the map and Ypres is a comfortable small town, although local farmers and developers continue to turn up several hundred tonnes of potentially lethal unexploded munitions each year. Last year, a tractor driver narrowly escaped injury when his plough detonated a First World War shrapnel shell.
And the rows of white memorial stones in at least 170 well-tended Commonwealth War Graves Commission military cemeteries across Flanders, and countless other burial sites, bear witness to the enormity of this struggle and mutely heap shame on humanity’s propensity for war.
Now, Scotland has its own commemorative monument in the area: a 33,000-Euro initiative launched by Flemish locals. From it, the visitor can look over the flat ground, tranquil fields today, planted mostly in potatoes and corn, towards the low ridge of Passchendaele.
The 4.30 p.m. unveiling ceremony on the Saturday was the focal point for a weekend of Scottish-centred, largely bagpipes and pipe band-led activity that included special displays at the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 museum in Zonnebeke, a tattoo, a dawn walk of the Frezenberg line and a Highland games.
“I could not imagine this event taking place with bagpipes in an any less prominent role,” said Erwin Ureel, co-ordinator of the Scottish Memorial in Flanders Campaign and principal organiser of the unveiling weekend’s programme. “They are a symbol not only of Scotland but also stand for Scottish involvement in the Great War, and other wars.
“No instrument is better suited to evoke the different feelings engendered by war commemorations such as this. Whether they play marches or laments, the pipes always stir emotions.
“There where several moments during the weekend that were particularly memorable: when the massed bands played our new tune On the Road to Passchendaele during the tattoo, or when a lone piper played Flowers of the Forest at 5 a.m. on the Sunday, illuminated by the brazier near the cross. The long and spontaneous silence of 250 participants after that tune, there in the dark in the midst of the former battlefield, was almost sacred.”
Observances began on the Friday night, with an expanded Last Post ceremony attracting a large crowd at the Menin Gate in Ypres where the Isle of Cumbrae Royal British Legion Scotland Pipe Band was joined by the south of England-based fife and drums Corps of Drums of the Cinque Ports Rifle Volunteers.
The ceremony, which includes the playing of the Last Post, prayer and a minute’s silence, wreath layings and Reveille has been a daily remembrance in Ypres since 24 July, 1927. The Menin Gate is itself a dramatic monument. On its walls are engraved more than 54,000 names of British soldiers killed on the Ypres Salient before 15 August, 1917, and whose graves are unknown; the list is continued — another 35,000 names — on the vast rear wall of the Tyne Cot cemetery.
Enclosing some 12,000 marked graves on the site of a set of five machine gun bunkers captured by Australian troops on 4 October, 1917, Tyne Cot is the world’s largest Commonwealth War Graves cemetery.
The unveiling of the new memorial, which drew a crowd of more than 1,000 participants, was the climax a moving two-hour tribute involving local and British military and organisational representatives and individuals.
Music, from the pipes in particular, played a large part in it all. The 1 Battalion Scots Guards Pipes and Drums, the Isle of Cumbrae Royal British Legion Scotland Pipe Band, the Somme Battlefield Association Pipe Band from France and the Passchendaele 1917 Pipes and Drums were joined by the Royal Band of the Belgian Air Force, the Corps of Drums of the Cinque Ports Rifle Volunteers from England and the local Harmony St Cecilia Beselare band.
Following a welcome by the local mayor, Dirk Cardoen and first alderman Franky Bryon, Lieutenant General Sir Alastair Irwin, president of the Royal British Legion Scotland, spoke of the thousands of mostly young Scots who died in the First World War, including those who were killed 90 years previously in the area immediately surrounding the new memorial, and the appreciation that is felt by their descendants and others for the perpetuation of their memory by Belgium.
Other speakers included the Flemish Minister of Public Works, Energy, Environment and Nature, Hilde Crevits; Scotland’s Minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture, Linda Fabiani; and Scotland’s Advocate General, Lord Neil Davidson of Clova.
A theme was the call to peace that the monument represents and the pledge of local Flemish people to remember the soldiers who died in their defence. “The Scottish memorial in Flanders is the unambiguous expression of this present and future commitment of the community of Zonnebeke towards the victims,” said Zonnebeke burgomaster Dirk Cardoen.
Clergy representing three denominations led a prayerful reflection
Major Gavin Stoddart, former Director of Army Bagpipe Music debuted his commemorative composition, On the Road to Passchendaele, and Scots singer-songwriter Alan Brydon presented his composition, Callin’ Doon the Line and other songs. Four pupils from Belmont Academy, Ayrshire, presented an account of a study they had researched on a local Passchendaele casualty, Private Alan Jess, and placed his photograph at the foot of the memorial where a number of wreaths were also placed by VIPs, organisations and individuals.
A plaque on the monument, the Arbroath plaque, was also unveiled, jointly, by Brigadier John C. d’Inverno (representing Major General David McDowall, General Officer Commanding, 2 Division, a command that covers the Army in Scotland and northern England); Reggie Picavet, president of the Flemish Caledonian Society; John Wembridge, honorary president of the society; and Tom Jenkins, who campaigned for the memorial.
Flower of Scotland was played as Scotland’s “unofficial national anthem” and Robert Burn’s Is there for honest poverty was read by Ian Lyell of the Mauchline Burns Club.
A newly designed and registered “Passchendaele” tartan was presented to the village of Zonnebeke-Passchendaele in the name of the people of Scotland.
The ceremony closed with the Last Post, a minute’s silence and Reveille, followed by a massed bands’ performance of Highland Cathedral.
That evening, a tattoo was held at the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 in Zonnebeke. It involved all of the afternoon’s bands and a local Flemish-Celtic ensemble, The Swigshift, that is serving as a “house band” for area’s 90-year commemoration of the Battle of Passchendaele. A capacity crowd of more than 1,200 people attended the tattoo and others, who had been unable to buy tickets for the fully sold out show, clustered near the ground’s entrances, standing and sitting to hear and see what they could of the 150-minute programme.
Before dawn the following morning, some 250 people, led by pipers and escorted by guides undertook a four-kilometre “battlefield walk” during which the layout of the battlefield and British strategy were outlined, and weapons and uniforms were shown and explained.
The walk included a performance of William St Clair’s play, The Prayer, tots of rum handed to walkers by costumed nurses at a “First Aid Post — and a “Scottish” breakfast prepared on authentic First World War-type Sawyer camp cookers by a veteran Army cook and specialist British Army historical cookery re-enactor, Peter Scally from Ayr.
The final event of the Scottish commemorative weekend was a mini Highland Games and programme of entertainment that attracted more than 8,000 local people and overseas visitors to the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917.
The museum, in Zonnebeke, displays images and movies, a large collection of historical artefacts and life-like dioramas. One of the most telling displays is a replica underground dugout tunnel with a communications room and dressing post, headquarters, workplaces and dormitories. A three-kilometre walking and cycling path leads from the museum to Tyne Cot cemetery, following the advance of Australian troops on 4 October 1917 — “the road to Passchendaele”.
The Scottish monument is the first to represent all Scots in the First World War, rather than particular units, or those who were casualties on a particular battlefield. A number of regiments, battalions and divisions are commemorated at different battlefield sites, and a Piper’s Memorial, commemorating pipers who were killed during the First World War was dedicated in July 2002 in the French village of Longueval. The three-metre high monument, sculpted by Andy De Comyn, depicts a piper in battle dress, kilt and helmet climbing the parapet of a trench at the launch of an attack.
Longueval was the scene of heavy fighting by the 9th (Scottish) Division during the Battle of the Somme in July 1916 where, on the first day of the offensive in 1916, 60,000 British casualties were incurred. Incorporated within the Division was the South African Brigade.
Organisers of the campaign to erect the Scottish monument at Zonnebeke recognised that, among those who fought and died in service with Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African units, were soldiers who were born in Scotland or who valued their Scottish descent and heritage. “This monument embraces the memory of them all,” said Erwin Ureel. His own efforts, he said, were inspired by his love of Scotland and, as a serving soldier in the Belgian Army, his feeling that the soldiers the monument commemorates are comrades-in-arms, despite the fact that they fought a in a war 90 years ago.
“Their effort should not be forgotten.”
Nor was it.
“The event far exceeded my expectations,” he said. “We had hoped to see 500-600 people at the ceremony, and were astonished to have the more than 1200 people there, with a great many Scots attending — and people who came from as far away as California.
“It would have been of not of much use had we raised a memorial for the Scots if they were not prepared to accept it,” said Erwin Ureel, “but the strength of Scottish interest for the event proved again that this national memorial was long overdue.
“I was extremely pleased with the involvement of the Scottish and Flemish Governments, and both are continuing to follow up the project.”