In Flanders Fields
Poperinge, Belgium
Five miles from Ypres, in a quiet courtyard in the village of Poperinge, stands a pole of the sort used to support the twining vines of hops, a common local crop. It is about the height of a man. Just behind it is a steel plaque engraved with a verse from Rudyard Kipling: “I could not look on death, which being known, men led me to him, blindfold and alone.”
As the seemingly endless war dragged on, desertion and troop mutinies became an increasing problem. To combat the problem, commanders began tying deserters and mutinous troops to poles like this one where they would be executed by firing squad. The British shot 320 men and the French as many as 700. The Germans, by contrast, shot about 50.
In one of two cells near the Poperinge monument, where soldiers were held before their execution at dawn, visitors now come to remember not just the heroics of war but its horrors.
Poperinge, Belgium
Five miles from Ypres, in a quiet courtyard in the village of Poperinge, stands a pole of the sort used to support the twining vines of hops, a common local crop. It is about the height of a man. Just behind it is a steel plaque engraved with a verse from Rudyard Kipling: “I could not look on death, which being known, men led me to him, blindfold and alone.”
As the seemingly endless war dragged on, desertion and troop mutinies became an increasing problem. To combat the problem, commanders began tying deserters and mutinous troops to poles like this one where they would be executed by firing squad. The British shot 320 men and the French as many as 700. The Germans, by contrast, shot about 50.
In one of two cells near the Poperinge monument, where soldiers were held before their execution at dawn, visitors now come to remember not just the heroics of war but its horrors.