The Liége 14-18 Expo

Today I spent some time walking around Liege trying to find some August 1914 type things to do.  I was beginning to become a little discouraged by the lack of general commemorating going on around me when I passed by the front of this souvenir shop.  It had a bunch of books with illustrated covers about various local topics and the Great War!  There was a book about Liége itself, a book about the forts (including the Second World War), a book about massacres!  This was no ordinary souvenir shop!

Ok, maybe it was, but it had all these interesting books.  The fellow behind the counter told me about a few things to look for concerning the Great War and Belgium, even directed me to another shop!  He also mentioned that right up the street the museum was having an "Expo", but also, the train station across the street from my hotel was having one too!

So I got lunch and went to the museum.

The Musée del Vie Wallonne

For tearing up the road :)

This Expo was a collection of items and artworks around Belgium's participating in the First World War.  It main had uniforms, soldiers possessions and things painted and drawn about the war, during the war.

For example, included a proper ancient motorcycle for you motorcycle enthusiasts.  It looks just like a bicycle except that it has a 100 year old piston engine and a long thin metal tank full of gasoline directly under your crotch.  I'm sure it was awesome, and I would definitely trade in my Enfield for one of these.

Does not tear up the road :(

It also had things like machine guns, which are one of the more significant features of the Great War.  One of the main problems for soldiers, of course.

Albert I is for tearing up the Kaiser

 All in all, it was a rather small exhibit, but it did contain some good artwork.  My favorite is includes a rather dashing heroic figure who happened to be monarch of a small, neutral, European country.  The Kaiser says to Albert, "So you see -- you've lost everything."

A monument, an angel
with a sword and a Belgian
flag.

"Not my soul", he retorts, with the cunning and bravado of a Honey Badger.

That's because King Albert's soul is guarded by monuments, angels with swords and Belgian flags.

When I saw it, my heart sped up a little bit.  Yes, I'm that much of a dork.

All in all, very short.  But not bad!  And even better, my ticket includes entry to the other part of "Expo" at Guillemins train station across the street from my hotel.  "Great", I think, "If that part of the 'Expo' is even half as good as this, it will be worth it to check it out and then maybe get a nap back in my room.  And probably change my feet since I'm obviously going to destroy them before the end of the trip.

Guillemins Train Station

First of all, Guillemins train station is probably worth a tour on it's own.  I believe it was built with spaceships in mind.  You know, sometimes building stuff in Europe can take a little longer than you expect, because they have to be a lot more careful around regulation and building consensus and whatnot.  So I figure when they were designing it they thought we would have spaceships by the time they were finished.  They thought "Let's just get started on a spaceport now, and when they invent spaceships we'll just put in launch pads or whatever, instead of rails."  So it's like a spaceport when you go in.  A space station situated next to gambling parlous, empty store fronts and taverns.  It's Mos Eisley.

This exhibit was much larger than the one at Musée del vie Wallonne.  By a lot.  I soon realized, there would be no nap.  And I must say, this part of the exhibit is the main event.  I don't think I've been so moved by an exhibit before, but it could just be my WWI endorphins kicking in.

The first couple of rooms is dedicated to showing which countries declared war on which other country and when.  It pretty much goes like this: Austria-Hungary on Serbia, Germany on Russia, Germany on Belgium, UK on Germany, Bulgaria on Russia, France on Bugaria, Bulgaria on... wait, UK on... wait, Germany... I thought Germany already... hold, Russia... Italy... what is all this?  Turkey on Serbia... Greece, the USA.  Wait a minute, Japan just declared war on everyone, wait, not everyone... Siam?  Nicaragua, Haiti, all the colonies, Oceana...  ok, Ok, OK!!  It's everyone!  Everyone fights everyone.

It also has summaries along the walls of all the major combatants, where they are in their histories and what their war goals were: Belgium (of course), Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the United Kingdom, Buglaria, Turkey and France.  That's right, those are just the main ones, and I don't think it even includes the USA (although it might have because the US was important when it came to peace negotiations).

Actually seeing the national order of of battle like this, it truly became clear why this really is a World War, even though it was only really fought in Europe, Asia Minor and bits of the Middle East.

After this room, I can recall:

• I learned that the Belgians used dogs to move their machine guns around.
• Rooms with various uniforms and equipment on full sized mannequins.
• Rooms full of the various weapons used by all the combatants.
• A room where they set up an phony airplane to look like the plane of the Red Baron combined with 3D flight-sim video projected on the walls to give it the illusion of motion.
• An area made to look like a full trench with slots one could look out at the battlefield through.  On the battle field were all manner of soldiers fighting, along with corpses on a backdrop of films of the battlefield.  All the while it has sounds and flashing lights so that it seems like bombs and such.  Mainly the effect is that you can see the outlines of the statues on the battlefield doing things, and when the bombs light them up you briefly see their grizzly malformed faces and bodies.  I tried to take a video of this because one was so well done, but it didn't really come out.  This are had a number of things that increased the anxiety of people in it.  I especially noticed that the ground had been made up to look like it was muddy.  It was done so realistically well that you couldn't help worry about where you were stepping
• Rooms full of medical equipment, and depictions of women fighting to sew men back together after they were done tearing each other apart. 
• A room with all the known massacres of Belgian civilians at the start of the war.  The largest I found was Dinant, which had over 600 civilians killed.  I'm hoping to be there for the centennial on the 23rd.
• Rooms showing dozens of faces reconstructed from the face-masks used to make artificial facial feature replacements.  This included films of them replacing a man's cheek, nose and jaw where it had been destroyed in the war.

At the end of the exhibit was a section that talked about what happened when Armistice and then the Treaty were signed.  It discussed the ambition of Woodrow Wilson in creating the League of Nations and his attempts to resolve the remaining European disagreements through peace talks.

Of course as we know, and the exhibit reiterates, the victorious allies were too focused on their own ambitions to create a real lasting peace, and the rest of the conflict would be settled later.

The last plaque on the wall is about victories.  I think that what it says is worth reprinting here in its entirety:

New Victories 

Immediately after the conflict, the victorious countries were nonetheless wounded.  Victory was hollow, since the price paid in human life was so high and so many values had been flouted.  Awareness of their importance gradually emerged, but the road was still long and neither the peace treaties nor the League of Nations managed to appease the tensions which led to the Second World War.  The Allies had won the war, but they then had to win the peace.

Other combats on other battlefields were necessary to see the triumph of peace, life, freedom, tolerance, justice, solidarity, equality, democracy, education and fraternity.  These values are the building blocks of our society and it is primordial to tirelessly defend them at a time when violence irrespective of its form is front page news, at a time when peace remains fragile in certain regions of the world, at a time when the financial and economic crisis is demolishing solidarity, at a time when equality between men and woman is contested in certain countries, at a time when democracy and freedom are still flouted in the four corners of the earth in the name of pernicious ideologies, at a time when respect of rights comes up against selfish ambitions and totalitarian regimes, at a time when human life is too often sacrificed on the alter of sordid interests…

For us, one century later, the First World War raises this question of values… Values set to a backdrop of blood and tears…