This day we left Arras and travelled to the Essex farm cemetery. This is the location where John McCray is supposed to have wrote In Flanders Fields. The thing that amazed me the most was the number of German graves. While there graves only numbered around ten this is a surprising number considering it is a Commonwealth graveyard. The German graves stood out since the weren't rounded at the tops and were slightly thicker the the rest. After went to Tyne Cot, this cemetery was massive and filled with some 12,000 soldiers. While the sea of graves was shocking the number of people buried there really it me after we started leaving flags at all the graves of Canadian soldiers. I had started with a hand full of flags and after walking down a single row I had none left. The next place we went to was a museum that had been set up at Hill 62. This to me remains on of the highlights of the trip because out side they had athentic WW1 trenches that we were free to travel around in, and unlike the trenches at Vimy Ridge these trenches had not been overgrown with grass at the bottom and instead still had mud, making it much easier to see what the war was like when walking around in them, and gave a felling of seeing what Europe was like during the war. The next place we travelled to was a monument for all the Canadian soldiers who had died in the war, this made it truly aparent how much we had contributed to the war effort. We then arrived in Ypres were we would travel the city, eat dinner and then witness a ceremony at the menin gate that has been held there every night in honour of the soldiers who died in the trenches out side of the city. I can't write to much of this part since I was unable to see most of the ceremony. We then returned to the hotel for the rest of the night.
- Kristian
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