Ramparts War Cemetery and Hill 62

Thought I had finished my explorations for the day and settled in to write today's chapter while Johnny went out to look at another little war cemetery at the end of the road. It is the Ramparts War Cemetery and is situated at the Lille Gate.

About 15 minutes later the phone rang and Johnny said, "you have to come and see this little cemetery, it's just lovely", so off I went.

It contained the graves of a number of soldiers of the Maori Battalion.

There is one group of six young soldiers who all died on the same day - 23rd December 1917. It appears that this particular group of six have recently had visitors. There are crocheted poppies, all with different buttons in the centres scattered along the edge of the garden bed where their headstones stand. They looked quite beautiful.

Having established that it seems to be OK to leave a memento at a headstone we made the decision to pay another visit to Willie's grave and place a small cross with a poppy on it at the base of his headstone. To save time (and our legs) we phoned the taxi who delivered us here from the railway station a couple of days ago. He picked us up shortly afterwards and took us to the South Menin Road Cemetery. He was happy to wait for us to leave the little cross on Willie's grave and as he had been chatting about Hellfire Corner, which I knew was only a short distance up the road, I suggested to John that perhaps we should ask him to take us there before

returning to town.

He was more than happy to oblige. He was a fountain of information as he was born here as was several previous generations of his family. He drove us around Hellfire Corner a couple of times (it is a roundabout nowadays) and as this was happening we asked him if there was anything else worth taking a look at nearby.

He suggested going to Hill 62 which was just down the road, so off we went. There is a museum at Hill 62 and an area of trenches that have been preserved. Unfortunately we arrived shortly after closing time but we were still able to go and see the memorial atop Hill 62. All the while our driver was feeding us a lot of interesting facts.

For instance, 62 refers to the height in meters above sea level. The same applies to Hill 60 which was just a little bit further away.

We talked about the history of Belgium which has been invaded so many times I think the country has had a bit of a bad run. Since the Vikings and Romans all the way through to WWII, they haven't had a lot of peace. And I learned that Belgium was the area know as Gaul in Roman times. Don't know how that bit of history slipped through my education and not sure where I thought Gaul was.

Upon returning to the car our driver turned off the meter. He said that if he had dropped us there he would have returned to town anyway and we wouldn't have had to pay for that. So we were really impressed.

If you ever plan to visit Ypres, look up the website: www.vtctaxi.be, they are most obliging and will do all manner of trips.