Monthly Archives: July 2005

The Last Day of July 2005

General

Sunday, July 31st 2005 is almost in the past. I think that time seems to pass too quickly and lots of things that I should have done are not even started. Dang! Today was a busy Sunday. It all started about 11:30 p.m. last night when the power went out. When that happens my nasal cpap machine stops running, of course, and I wake up. Sleep is impossible until power is restored and the machine starts working again. About 1 a.m. power was finally restored and I was back to sleep only to wake up at 6:30. I deliberately didn’t set an alarm clock so that I could sleep in as late as my body would allow. 6:30 was apparently the limit. After letting Bradica (the dog) out and getting her fed, I decided to stay up. Good thing, because starting about 7:00 the telephone calls started coming in.

I first heard from Nina who has safely arrived with Daryl literally in tow in Philadelphia. Daryl is now in his new apartment and will start his new job on Tuesday. The RV is empty of Daryl’s stuff and his car is unhitched from the back of the RV. Nina will continue on to Connecticut tomorrow morning. I’m wishing I was there for this big road trip! Nina was followed by several other phone calls from family and Ward members. In between the calls, I finished preparing the Sunday School lesson that I was scheduled to teach today, the talk I was to deliver in Sacrament Meeting, and practiced the hymns for Sacrament Meeting that I would be accompanying on the organ. That’s right: I was teaching a Sunday School class, playing the organ for Sacrament meeting, and was the concluding speaker.

The Bishop had called a couple of days ago and asked if I would be willing to speak on such short notice in Sacrament Meeting. He felt that I should prepare about 10-12 minutes on the subject of missionary work. It turned out there were only two speakers for the meeting and when it was my turn, there was thirty minutes left in the meeting. Because I didn’t know in advance how much time I would have, I had prepared a lot of material and set it up in a way that I could slice big chunks out if there wasn’t much time available. I used all of my material and we ended the meeting on time. I talked about my grandfather Nathan LeRoy Smith’s mission experiences in Samoa in 1912 through 1915. After the meeting, a member of the ward came up to tell me that when he was a teenager in Preston, he had lived next door to my grandfather. We had a great conversation and we’ll continue it at a later date. We’re cousins a couple of times removed.

After church I went to Soda Springs. I had picked up some steaks yesterday and had put some cheese-potatoes in the oven before leaving for church. They were ready when I got back after church and that was the dinner I took to Soda Springs. Tomorrow is my mother’s 81st birthday. We had a very nice visit and covered a wide range of topics. I enjoy going over the Soda Springs to visit with them. That finished off the day. I’ll publish this post, take care of the dog, and will head for bed. The workday starts early tomorrow morning!

A Somewhat Productive Saturday

General

Bradica and I are keeping the house occupied while Nina travels in the eastern United States. Her trip has been quite a saga, but that’s a story for her to tell. I’ll join her in a couple of weeks and travel back home with her. Meanwhile, today was a Saturday — a fairly busy day, actually. A company picnic was scheduled for the afternoon in a nearby city park. I was assigned to pick up some deli trays and to be at the park at 11:30 am to help setup. So, I spent a little while pulling weeds out of the area by the front door and then went to the picnic. It was a good event and people had a lot of fun. I took a lot of pictures, so they’ll end up in a DVD slideshow for people at the office eventually.

After the picnic I’ve been fairly lazy. I’m quite tired but need to stay up until about 10 so I can get completely turned around and through the jetlag problem. It’s only another 50 minutes!! I have started to put up some pictures from my business trip to Belgium. I started with the Flanders Field American Cemetery. Other pictures from Kortrijk, Ieper, and the Ijzer Front Tour will follow over the next few days. All of my posted pictures are accessible by clicking on the “pictures!” link on the right.

Home Alone

General

I arrived home on Tuesday night, Nina left on Wednesday morning for a major road trip out east. That makes me a lone fellow in the house. It’s very quiet with only me and Bradica (the dog). I’m coping with jet lag as well. Nina left about 6:30 Wednesday morning, so I got up for that and then went into work. I stayed until about noon and came home for a two-hour nap. I stayed up until about 9 and then crashed. But, at 4:30 I was wide awake. Tonight my plan is to stay up until 10 and get onto a normal schedule. We’ll see how that goes!

Back In The USA

E-Mail Musings

The Northwest flight from Amsterdam was a few minutes early! The plane was
at the gate at 6:11 pm and I was through Immigration, Customs, recheck
baggage, and Security by 6:35 pm. Astounding is a good description. On the
other hand, I’m tired. I’ve arrived at the departure gate for the Idaho
Falls and it’s about 2 am Belgium time. It would be nice to take a snooze.
This gate is as far as it is possible to be from where I arrived! It was a
very long walk. However, the long leg is finished. It’s good to be almost
home.

I ran the battery out on my laptop computer on the flight from Amsterdam
going through pictures and getting some of them ready to be put on the
website. It was fun going through them and a bit frustrating to see the
pictures I should have also taken.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Once Again in Amsterdam

E-Mail Musings, Travels

Northwest Flight 55 from Amsterdam to Minneapolis departs from gate E-20.
Just after passing through Passport Control is the main security
checkpoint. The metal detectors in Europe are set differently and are a
different type than in the US. That means for me I don’t have to take off
so much stuff when going through the machine. I like that a lot. Then there
is secondary screening at the gate. This one is much more like the US and
thus much more inconvenient. Today all went well and I’m ready to board,
which should start in about 10 minutes.

The flight will be about eight and a half hours long. Dinner service takes
about two hours after takeoff. Breakfast is served about an hour and a half
before landing. That leaves about five hours in the middle. I’ve got a good
book, Brave Companions by David McCullough. I started the book on the way
over and am about half way through. I also have some 900 pictures to decide
what to do with.

I left the hotel at 9 am and headed to the Amsterdam airport. I had some
problem navigating through Rotterdam and had to backtrack twice. A
navigator would be helpful. I need to look for a good GPS that works over
here. I’d like to be able to specify the route in advance rather than the
GPS deciding the route. The computer doesn’t always know to plan around
traffic choke points such as the Ring around Antwerp.

The departure area is filling up. I’m ready to load up, kick the tires,
light the fires, and get out of here!

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Last Night in Kortrijk

E-Mail Musings, World War One

The workday is over and I’m back at my hotel. When I came in, the fellow atthe desk wanted to confirm that I would be checking out in the morning. I assured him that I was; he assured me that they needed the room. I’magreeable to this exchange.

I am now a bit suspicious of good parking places. The street in front of the door to the hotel had cars parked to a certain point and then the street was open from there to the corner. I parked and then looked aroundand found a temporary sign saying no parking starting today at 7 pm. The last car in the line was blocking the sign. So, I got back in the car andwent in search of a parking spot. Two times around the (quite large) block revealed no space, so I broadened my search and found a place a couple of blocks away. This one is for sure legal.

I am having dinner at the hotel. It’s a reasonably nice place and where I was put to sit was OK until the fellow at the next table lit up a cigar. My table was in the corner and all the smoke came there. Of course, most of the tables outside are occupied and the tables inside aren’t set for meals. Tough. I wasn’t going to sit in the cigar smoke. That’s one thing that theEuropeans have against them are the arrogant smokers. People put up with it over here. I will not. I’d like to have some very visible nose plugs to
convey the message that the smoker (and particularly the cigar smoker) isstinking up the place.

On the way from the office to the hotel I wanted to get four pictures and ended up with five. The first was in Oudenaarde. When I was at the American Cemetery in Waregem, there was a picture on the wall of the Visitors Centerof a monument to the Americans in Audenard. Beside the picture was a big map of the area and it was clear that Ardenard and Oudenaarde are the same place. I didn’t know where the monument was, but I figured it had to be inor near the main square. As I drove that direction, a sandstone structure off in a small park caught my eye. It was the monument and I’ve got thepicture.

Next was the nuclear power plant on the way. I got there, pulled off the road, and had a good view right out the driver side window. As I had the window down and was framing the shot, a couple of cars passed me. Thethought crossed my mind: “What if they think I’m a terrorist casing the plant?” I quickly took my pictures and drove off.

The next picture site turned out to be two places. There is a largeDutch-style windmill that I drove by each way between the hotel and work. Until this morning, there was a bunch of scaffolding on the front of thewindmill. Today it was gone! So I decided to get a picture on the way home. I pulled in, stopped, and took a number of pictures. In one of the shots I
also wanted to get the street sign in the picture. Then I realized what thestreet sign said: Twee Moellen Straat. Twee = Two. Moellen = mill. Straat = street. The Two Mill Street. So where was the other mill? I got in the car and continued down the side street. Sure enough, around on the other sideof the hill was another windmill, this one a big Flemish-style mill. Two
for the price of one!

Lastly, a sign on the road pointed off to the side to a British War Cemetery. It was on the way, so I went down the side street to a church and a church cemetery. Next to it was a military cemetery much like the onesI’d stopped at over the holiday and the weekend. I started to leave when I saw a headstone in the front row with a space to the side that looked quitedifferent. I went up to the headstone to see that it was inscribed in German: “Two unknown German soldiers”. I saw other headstones with German
inscriptions. They were kind of apart from the British headstones, at leastnear the front. Some had names, others had counts of unknowns, and others had both. I looked for the cemetery information plaque and learned thatthere were about 140 British soldiers and 57 German soldiers buried in the cemetery, all killed in the last days of the war.

What a thought. Of course in any conflict there is the last person to bekilled (and the last person to die from wounds). That person could be in this cemetery. The Great War came to a stop by agreement at eleven minutes after eleven a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918. In some sectors, particularly on the western front, fighting
continued right up to the moment the white smoke flares went up which, along with the five cannon shots, marked the end of the war. What must it be like for the mother whose son might still be alive if the war had ended a minute or two earlier? Why did the war have to end at such a peculiar hour? It’s very curious to me and very sad for the mothers and fathers of these boys killed when the war was all but over.

The woman in charge of the restaurant isn’t having a good night. I started something, perhaps. Two other tables have asked to be reseated and the smoker is now on his third cigar.

Tomorrow I leave for Amsterdam and the flight home. It’s been a good tripand I’m ready to get back to my own bed!

The High Ground

General, Travels, World War One

The High Ground Mill

This was the last stop on this 48-mile tour of the area around the northern World War One battlefield. By this time there was a pretty good rain coming down which only goes to soften and enhance the picture of the Van Couillie mill. The area around here is quite flat and was for centuries a bog and marshland which would flood during the late winter and early spring, never really drying out. Then came dikes and locks and pumps and the land was drained and reclaimed for farming. The pumps as well as the mills were all wind-powered systems. Gristmills were placed on as high ground as possible to catch the wind and then made as tall as feasible (and affordable) so that huge sails could be installed. This mill was one of the largest and tallest in the region. It was captured by the Germans before it could be destroyed by the Belgian engineers. It served as a lookout and surveillance point through much of the war. One particularly important use by the Germans was to look for and pinpoint artillery muzzle flashes so that the German guns could target the allied artillery. As such, the mill was also the target of the allied artillery as well. The picture shows what remains of the mill which stands as a monument to the war.

So, the Ijzer Battlefront Tour is complete. It took much longer than I had anticipated but was quite educational. Additional pictures may make it to the website! I took more than 800 pictures on this trip…. I finished the tour about 2 p.m. in the afternoon.

The original plan was to go to Church and then complete the tour in the afternoon. The Hotel people were kind enough to try and contact someone who would know where the Branch met. I got back to the hotel last night to find a phone number to call. It was the Kortrijk missionaries’ cell phone. They told me the Branch was now meeting in Moeskroen — a town about 10 miles south of Kortrijk. There was a French-speaking branch and a building in Moeskroen (Mouscron in French), so the Kortrijk Branch had moved there some months ago to save on rent. However, the missionaries couldn’t give me the address or tell me how to get there. They gave me the phone number for the Branch President — the same number I had called the week before. I called the president who told me that the members met “behind the train station at the bus stop — the only bus stop behind the station — at 9:15 a.m. and carpooled to the branch.” So, at 9 a.m. I was at the bus stop. There were no group of branch members carpooling. About 9:20 an elderly woman showed up (the only person I had seen anywhere in the area). She spoke only French. When I asked if she was Mormon, she nodded in the affirmative. She either didn’t know or couldn’t tell me that she knew the route to the Church building. She stayed about 5 minutes, then got on her bicycle and rode away the way she had come. I waited another 10 minutes and the left myself. It shouldn’t be this hard to go to Church in a foreign country!

So, I went back to the hotel, changed out of my church clothes, and headed back to Keiem where I had left off the tour the night before. After completing the tour, I headed for the freeway planning to make a fast drive to the office where I could get a good Internet connection (that’s where I am now, at about 8:15 p.m. on Sunday evening Belgian time — the times on the weblog entries are all Pocatello time). I saw a McDonalds on the way — the first one I had seen in that area — and stopped for a Big Mac lunch meal. Then to the freeway and almost an immediate traffic jam. There was an accident ahead. I crawled along with thousands of other cars for an hour to the next exit where I made my way overland to the office.

So, I’ve spent the last four hours fixing some pictures and uploading them, putting a picture on each of the posts relating to World War One. I started linking up some other pictures in the text, but haven’t gotten very far on that activity. When I get home I’ll put more pictures on the website under the Pictures! link. It’s been a good trip.

I’ll be in the office all day on Monday. I’ll check out of the hotel on Tuesday morning and make my way to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. My flight is at 4:30 p.m. so I should have plenty of time to get there. Early is good — I can always wait at the airport in the lounge! There will likely be limited posts until I get home from here. I’ll spend the time categorizing pictures and getting them ready to be uploaded instead. I’ve got a lot of pictures to toss out!

Italian Prisoners of War

E-Mail Musings, Travels, World War One

Italian Graves

I’m at the penultimate stop on this tour — the Belgian Cemetery of Houthulst. This cemetery contains the remains of Belgian soldiers from the great push in September 1918. The war had at most six weeks left, but no one knew that. The Germans had launched a major offensive in the summer of 1918 closing to within 30 miles of Paris. About this time the Americans arrived to strengthen the defenses and to begin an offensive push. The result was the German army began to retreat. The woods around this cemetery, about five miles from the Ijzer River and the front, was where the Germans had set their artillery as well as the Long Max, a railroad based huge gun that could fire missiles up to 40 miles. This area was one of the key objectives of the allied offensive in the north in order to silence the guns. That goal was achieved in early October 1918 by the Belgian Army under the direction of the French. Almost 1900 soldiers from that battle
are buried here.

Also buried here, at the back of the cemetery forming a backdrop, are 81
Italian soldiers who, as prisoners of war, died in a German labor camps in
the region.

It has stopped raining! On to the last stop — an old windmill, the Van
Couillie Mill.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld