Quiet

I tried to visit Le Mémorial Interalliés de Cointe today, but it was closed and had signs on it stating that entry was prohibited (I believe the exact wording was "interdit").  Behind the signs were a whole bunch of Belgian troops doing stuff with a whole bunch of Belgian trucks.  Well, we all know that on August 7th, you better not mess with Belgian troops.

Rather than poke around any more than I did, feeling that honor had been satisfied, I decided to call it a call it a day.  The memorial is right across the street on the other side of Mos Eisley, so I had an early lunch and then returned to my room to offer mercy to the feet I've been trying so hard to destroy.  Also, to plan out a little bit more of my trip, rather than just driving headlong in to the Great War unknown, because for me there sure is a lot of unknown.

While it might have been all quiet on the modern front, it was certainly not quiet on the Belgian front one hundred years ago.  As I attempted to describe in a previous post, the assaults against the forts around Liege continued on August 7th at terrible cost to the German infantry.  It's hard for me to imagine what it must have been like for those young men, many of them really just boys, to have to rush against a modern fortification on open fields with no cover against machine guns an rifle fire accurate out to 1/2 kilometer.

I meant to refer yesterday to a post made by Brad DeLong, in which he included a set of paragraphs from The Guns of August which had been etched in my memory.  I include a sub-quote from his quote here.  You might like to read the rest of the quote on his blog:

On August 5 Emmich’s brigades opened the attack on the four easternmost forts of Liège with a cannonade by field artillery followed by infantry assault. The light shells made no impression on the forts, and the Belgian guns poured a hail of fire on the German troops, slaughtering their front ranks. Company after company came on, making for the spaces between the forts where the Belgian entrenchments had not been completed. At some points where they broke through, the Germans stormed up the slopes where the guns could not be depressed to reach them and were mowed down by the forts’ machine guns. The dead piled up in ridges a yard high. At Fort Barchon, Belgians, seeing the German lines waver, charged with the bayonet and threw them back. Again and again the Germans returned to the assault, spending lives like bullets in the knowledge of plentiful reserves to make up the losses. “They made no attempt at deploying,” a Belgian officer described it later, “but came on line after line, almost shoulder to shoulder, until as we shot them down, the fallen were heaped on top of each other in an awful barricade of dead and wounded that threatened to mask our guns and cause us trouble. So high did the barricade become that we did not know whether to fire through it or to go out and clear openings with our hands....

...a terrible thing.

The Guillemins Railway Station

I mentioned yesterday that my hotel was on the seedy side of the street opposite an extraordinarily exquisite railway station.  As I as passing by I thought I might take a couple of snapshots to illustrate how excellent and spaceport-like it really is.  The snapshots are below:

From a slight elevation at the rear of the train station.

 

Right under the main arch in the front where the giant bomb for
the 14-18 "Expo" is on display.

Entrances to the future launch pads, docking bays, etc.

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…

Baggage retrieved

I think the most exciting thing that happened yesterday was that I was able to change my trousers for the first time in 6 days.  I'm sure all of Belgium will appreciate my fresher look.  I did manage to stop by Fort Barchon on my way back to Köln, however it's really just a recreational facility and is only open to the public once each month.  It happens to be on Sunday, the same day it surrendered, but I won't be in Liege.  Oh well, there are other forts that have better prepared museums.  I may even be able to get a tour of one where I'm required to bring a flashlight.  I hope that means we are going underground and will be climbing ladders in the dark and such.

Returning to Köln was rather nice, even though it was very very brief.  It means that I had some really good vibes in that town.  Kölsch!

Oui

First conversation in French ever.  Meh.  Not great.  But you should see the other guy.

The United Kingdom declares war on Germany

One hundred years ago today, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany for violating Belgian neutrality yesterday.  This marks the point in which all the major powers of the war have finally become committed.  The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was mobilized yesterday and is preparing to cross the Channel.

Germany began assaulting the fortresses that surrounded the city of Liege, which is where I currently am.  The assaults were met with greater resistance than expected.  German casualties were very high as they faced accurate Belgian rifles, machine guns and artillery.  The unexpected carnage, of which I've read one description where bodies had literally formed walls used by advancing troops behind them, are a foreshadowing of the violence that would be the experience of the wars combatants for the next four years.

Today I will mostly reenact events by which the German Field Martial von Bulow had to return to Köln to retrieve a baggage that had become separated from the main forces.  I will try not to let the fact that this even never happened and is completely made up by myself, distract me.  I will drive all the way back to my hotel in Köln and retrieve the luggage which the airlines finally delivered Sunday evening after I had already left.  And then I shall finally change my trousers.

Gimmenich and the Three Frontiers

Yesterday I hiked from the outskirts of Aachen Germany to the border with Belgium and the Netherlands.  At the three borders is a park that more or less spans all three countries.  After visiting the park, I hiked the rest of the way to Gimmenich, one of the first places captured by Germany at the start of the war.

I parked rather close to the border.  I've already done a lot of walking and my feet are quite sore.  I was very pleased that the border is well visited and therefore had some reasonable parking available at just the right distance for me, about 1.7km.

The path through German forest to Belgium.

Up ahead, the Belgian border, gloriously undefended in this time
of (west) European peace.

Right on the other side of the border in Belgium, is a parking lot, next to the park.  There is a belgian part, with a tower and some shops, and there is a Dutch part, with a maze and some shops.  The German part looked mostly like just forrest.  At the intersection of all three countries is a marker with all three flags.

Here I am looking shabby wearing the same trousers for the fifth day
in a row.  I was lucky people were kind enough to take this photo of me
heroically clutching the Belgian flag.  This is at the intersection of
all three countries.  I'm standing in Germany, the photographer in Belgium.

The border between Belgium and the Netherlands is that little green line between the cobble stones.

I could not read the sign.
Translations welcome.

I had to see all (both) attractions at the park, so bought a ticket to the maze.  Unfortunately I never really solved the maze, but rather found the exit and took a short cut through the center.  But that was after getting well lost in the maze proper.  The maze itself was a dark, confusing and foreboding place.  Lost inside you never would know when you would encounter another fellow traveler, nor would you know what language they would speak.  It could be Dutch.  I could be German.  Or French or that Flemish language they speak up north.  Or that really weird language from that soggy island next to the north sea, which is really just a combination of all of them.

The maze also contained many watery dangers.  There were gates which were guarded by mighty hoses which would shoot water from them up at any passer by.  It was not clear what it was that controlled these formidable monsters.  Were they on a timer?  Some people in the maze seemed to think they were controlled by motion sensors.  Or were some of them controlled by motion sensors while others were on a timer?  Whatever the logic behind these traps, it was impossible to traverse the maze without terrible peril to your mobile phone.

Also somewhere in there was one of those wooden walls with a painting of someones body on one side with a hole cut where the head is meant to be.  If you are traveling with companions one can stick their head in the hole from behind while the other takes a picture.  I did not have such a luxury, so I decided I would follow the latest craze and take the stupidest selfie ever.  I have no idea what the couple who walked past thought of me when I was doing this, but never mind.

Finally, I figured out that if you go back to the start of the maze there is a path that led more or less right to the center.  I thought maybe this was some sort of clever there-is-no-real-solution maze, which I kind of thought was lame, so I just followed that path.  Turns out, the sign must have meant "exit", so I never really solved it.  I did however get to the center of the maze and took this partial panoramic photograph.

The center of the maze, when I foolishly used the shortcut.

I also climbed up the giant tower.

The view from the top of the tower.  This panorama includes, from left to right, Belgium (including Gemmenich), the Netherlands and Germany.  Click on it for more detail.

Also on the Belgian side of the park is a monument to fighters in the second world war.

Translations welcome, it will take me forever.

After seeing the WWII monument, I went on to complete the journey which I really intend, which is to visit the village of Gimmenich on foot, another 2.8km or so.  It's not so far.  On the way, I noticed that there were numerous trees with the markings as depicted on the image on the right.  I've seen these markings before.  The last time was on the side of a road outside of the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.  My understanding is that this is a marking that indicates land mines.  If this is what those marking means here, it probably means they are left over from the second world war.  Alternatively, this could just be a really wicked and highly effect forestry conservation tactic.  Either way, I'm happy to stay on the trails.

As I approach the peaceful village of Gimmenich.

A war monument in the main circle of the village.  The disks on the gate in front denote
the beginnings of each war, 1914 and 1939 on the left, and the ends of the wars,
1918 and 1945 on the right.

This may be the list of people from Gimmenisch who were killed in the first war.

Of course I was too shy to actually speak to anyone in the village.  There was plenty of opportunity.  There was a perfectly nice and open saloon with a group of people staring suspiciously as I walked past.  I'm sure it would have been a great time if I stopped for a drink.

But it was also getting late, and I needed to walk back to the car, pick up my (travel on) bag in Aachen and then travel to Liege.

Live in peace Gimmenich!