Ypres - Ieper, Belgium, Flanders. Poets; Christmas Truce

Ypres, Belgium, WWI. Now spelled Ieper. On the French border, not far from Arras. Here is the map of the "Salient" or front there. See photos from the war at //www.worldwar1.com/pharc002. Click on every thumbnail. Enlarge the photos.

My uncle fought with the Canadian army there. He said that they used to call the town, "Wipers."

A soldier may be fodder, just as other groups can become like fodder when they are put in a category where the individual in the individual is denied. "Immigrants" today, perhaps. Even "blondes." But fodder is an ascribed status, and that does not mean victim, it does not mean fault, it does not mean unthinking. It means doing what you have to and can do under limited choices, those limitations or boxed stereotypes imposed by others. You can be in the fodder lines and still be heroic, retain dignity, assert your own choices.

Ieper, Belgium. Canadian War Memorial, WWI. Ypres.

Canadian war memorial at Ypres

The War was also a place of poems.

Soldiers in the soldier fodder lines, still retaining their identity, their protest, their observations as citizens, even as they do their jobs. Read the poems of World War I here - at //gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2005/06/poetry-of-war-part-ii.
"In Flanders Fields the Poppies Grow." Go to the documentation center at Ypres with your name of a relative you may never have known who died somewhere there, and they probably can find the grave. See Belgium Road Ways.

Ypres was the site of the Christmas Truce, a "spontaneous fraternization" where British and German troops stopped the fighting, met across the trenches, exchanged cigarettes, and sang. Even played football in nomansland. This did not extend to the elite types of troops, however, or particularly hardened units. See //www.worldwar1.com/heritage/xmast.