Belgium WWI cemteries (#0359)

Visiting the German cemetery in Langemark was the end of my day of visiting cemeteries near Ypres. Though my original plan had been to visit some of the WWI memorials with striking sculptures commemorating the dead, I found myself glad that it worked out that I visited relatively small and ordinary looking cemeteries located within a relatively short distance of each other.

The proximity of the cemeteries, the fact that they had been near battlefields, and the fact that many of the cemeteries filled in very short periods of time, resulted in a strong sense of the high volume of death in WWI. In addition, their ordinariness and their intermingling with fields and farm houses, created a sense of the dreariness of war – of death as a tragic but almost inevitable part of the human cycle.