#490 Erkenningsnummer P708816
july 26, 2017 \ newsweekly - € 0,75 \ read more at www.flanderstoday.eu current affairs \ p2
Caves closed
The Muizenberg cave complex in Limburg has been shut down to visitors after someone set fire to bales of hay illegally stored in an entrance \2
politics \ p4
BUSiNESS \ p6
Future’s so bright
Did your sunglasses used to be a refrigerator? Then you’re not wearing w.r.yuma, recycled specs that can themselves be easily recycled \7
innovation \ p7
education \ p9
art & living \ p10
Man on a mission
A new website has been launched to celebrate the wildly popular 500 Secrets series, started by one Brussels journalist five years ago
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Memories of 1917
© Frank Hurley
Passchendaele marks centenary of muddy, bloody First World War battle Derek Blyth Follow Derek on Twitter \ @SecretBrussels
One hundred years have passed since the Battle of Passchendaele was fought in the mud of Flanders, but the story has never been forgotten.
O
n the first Monday of every month, more than 100 locals gather in the Sportsman bar just off the busy main road from Ypres to Langemark, West Flanders. They pile into this simple cafe to hold a ceremony in honour of Welsh poet Hedd Wyn, who died in fields across the road
on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele, one of the most monstrous campaigns of the First World War. The event is organised by the cafe’s owner, Marc Decaestecker, who has created a little shrine in a corner of the bar in memory of the poet. “It appears that Hedd Wyn has become a link between the Flemish and the Welsh,” a Welsh tourist noted recently in a local paper. “Two small nations who wish to preserve their culture in a united Europe moving towards peace.”
The Battle of Passchendaele began at 3.50 on the morning of 31 July 1917, when the British army launched an attack across the gentle agricultural slopes below the village of Passchendaele. Despite some initial successes, the campaign soon became bogged down in thick mud caused by torrential summer rain. Six weeks later and 650 kilometres away, at the National Eisteddfod literature festival in Birkenhead near Liverpool, judges announced the winner of its poetry competition. But continued on page 5