AMA’s trained
agents will find
a European
experience that’s
perfectly suited
to your interests
and travel style
WWI and WWII
Battlefields
(Trafalgar)
Depart May–Aug. 2017
12-day guided tour
of memorials in the
Netherlands, France and
Belgium; from $3,825
Call a travel specialist:
1-866-667-4777
Paris to Normandy
for WWII Historians
(Avalon Waterways)
July 7–14, 2018
8-day river cruise with
onboard lectures by
a WWII expert; from
$5,243 (AMA benefit:
Save $100/couple)
Call a cruise specialist:
1-866-989-6594
38
summer 2017
AMA InsIder
The historic Cloth Hall in Ypres
about nine kilometres east of Ypres,
visitors can walk among recreated
trenches and peer into the dugout,
constructed using original materials
from the era. Crouching in foxholes,
I see the same views that troops
witnessed during hard-won battles—
or the last scene many would have
gazed upon.
In the neighbouring town of Saint-
Julien, I crane my neck to stare at The
Brooding Soldier, a towering 11-metre-
high stone statue erected in 1923 to
commemorate Canadian casualties
suffered during 1915’s Second Battle of
Ypres. The looming stone soldier, with
downward-cast eyes, marks the four-
day skirmish during which one in every
three Canadian soldiers died.
Wandering through essex farm
Cemetery, some three kilometres north
of Ypres, I read In Flanders Fields
in the very location it was written by
Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John
McCrae. Back in Ypres, the Last Post
Ceremony at Menin Gate pays nightly
tribute to fallen heroes. Every evening
at 8 p.m., townsfolk arrive to observe
a moment of silence. It’s a reminder of
The Passchendaele
Canadian Memorial
near Ypres; the Last
Post Ceremony at
Menin Gate (left)
EvErt/AlAMy;
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