From Vol. 23, No. 2 (1997/98)
PHILATELY AND THE THIRD BATTLE OF THE YPRES SALIENT IN 1917
(Battle of Passchendaele - July 31 - Nov. 10)
"TYNE COT" and "PASSCHENDAELE ", two names inseparably linked to the place where the largest British military cemetery is located, and where the British fought the most deadly battle of the First World War.
On this small piece of Belgium, the English, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian soldiers fought with a wild eagerness without gaining more than a few hundreds of metres of ground. Engagements, not only against a known enemy but in addition under an incessant rain, in sticky mud, against vermin, deprivations, fatigue, illness and death.
The Canadians who were there and survived the battle of Passchendaele in Autumn 1917 gave it a world reputation. The 'oozy morass', in which they were bogged down for months; under a cloudy sky from which rain fell unceasingly; where whistles and exasperating bursts of artillery shells and the aggravating surprise of the deadly fire of the machine guns gave them the unforgettable experience of the atrocity of war.
Passchendaele and the valleys of Zonnebeke and Langemarck resembled a vast plain of mud strewn with semi-sinking vehicles and of petrified tree trunks, upon which men and their horses tried to stay upright. Thousands of times the ground was turned over, burned, poisoned and covered with rain. Roads, houses, woods, fields; the sodden shell craters, ground soaked with blood; and innumerable corpses, unrecognizably burned or atrociously blown apart. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers fell there. In death they no longer wore
'feldgrau' or 'khaki'; rather, they all wore the same uniform of mud and blood.
The battle of Passchendaele was the last phase in the battle of the Ypres Salient. The engagements persistedfor three and a half months. The devastation was total, even worse than the bombardment of English and German cities during the Second World War. Fortunately one rarely counted victims among the civil population since they fled or were evacuated at the beginning of the war. On returning to their residences after the armistice they could not find a stone or a shrub indicating to them the site of the house or the farm. The
Ypres salient resembled a 'Hiroshima of the Great War'.
In commemoration of the innumerable British soldiers who left their life in the Ypres salient in 1917, we are issuing a trilingual philatelic card, approximate size (19.5 x 25 cm). The illustration shows a British soldier who, under the rain and in mud, attacks with eagerness and persistence a German command post (drawing by Claude Lammens de Westkerke). To the drawing are added a view of the British military cemetery 'the Tyne Cot' to Zonnebeke and Porte de Ménin (the 'Memorial to the Missing') at Ypres. A special postage stamp of the series of the roses issued in 1997 will be affixed on the cover, because the rose is the flower most seen in British military cemeteries.
The postmarking and the sale of the cover will take place at Ypres at the town hall, where a temporary post office will be open on November 16, 1997. The official seal is represented at the bottom of the card. A philatelic exhibition will be organized on the spot with the collaboration of eminent philatelists and members of the Philatelic Club of Ypres. The profit of the sale will go to the a.s.b.l. Lieutenant-General ROMAN, (non-public
funds of the Belgian Army) and to the Philatelic Club of Ypres.
The price is (use a bank international money order) 200 Belgian Francs (BEF) each, plus 180 BEF postage and handling for up to 6 items. Please mention "YPRES" on your order, and mail to:
Commandant MOONS, Etienne
Tarwestraat, 15
B-8400 OOSTENDE
Belgium
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Created: February 12, 1998
In commemoration of the innumerable British soldiers who left their life in the Ypres salient in 1917, we are issuing a trilingual philatelic card, approximate size (19.5 x 25 cm). The illustration shows a British soldier who, under the rain and in mud, attacks with eagerness and persistence a German command post (drawing by Claude Lammens de Westkerke). To the drawing are added a view of the British military cemetery 'the Tyne Cot' to Zonnebeke and Porte de Ménin (the 'Memorial to the Missing') at Ypres. A special postage stamp of the series of the roses issued in 1997 will be affixed on the cover, because the rose is the flower most seen in British military cemeteries.