Falls the Shadow

Although there are no pictures of it, I have awesome memories of Scouter Amanda getting a Belgian Waffle for breakfast in Ypres before we left, lol! ‘magine! A Belgian Waffle here in Belgium! Anyway, so it was a bit of a grey day as we left Ypres to make our way to the Passchendaele Museum.

Just like with the “In Flander Fields Museum”, the Belgian people make a point of communicating the horror and pointlessness of war emphasizing that there can be no glory and there are never winners. The museum is incredible – definitely the best since Caen! The exhibits were hands on and very detailed. Scouts were able to try things on, pick things up, and really experience the exhibits.

After going through the seriously impressive galleries we end up at a staircase which leads us down into a recreation of the Passchendaele tunnels used in the first World War – AMAZING!

So we were already blown away by this museum, but after we emerged from the tunnels we walked into a fully recreated trench battlefield! The care to detail was incredible!

Although the entire museum was excellent, what really sticks with me more than anything else is the final exhibit in the museum which is an art installation titled “Falls the Shadow”… just a room full of arms reaching for air through the red mud of Passchendaele… true horror and loss. It was a quiet walk away from this one…


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