No pics yet - I'll post something once the students send me some - but ...

Yesterday I was kilted for the first time in France and in Belgium, for a field trip that I led from Lille (where I'm staying for the month, with the European Summe Program run by l'Université Catholique de Lille) to Passchendaele and Ypres. Of course, given the occasion, I wore the Maple Leaf tartan.

When I walked in to the university I was surprised by the seeming lack of reaction; only later did colleagues here point out that nearly everyone was turning around for a second look from the back. And then I got some very loud reactions: first a honk, shout, and thumbs-up from a passing motorcyclist, then applause from two women who serve in the student cafeteria. One of those women (in French, of course) then said she had to ask me something; you can probably guess what it was, although she was very circumspect in the asking ... although, after I responded in the positive, she added that that she might require proof (My response: "Peut-être plus tard." They were still laughing when I rounded the next corner.)

Then the field trip. I'd of course been to these places before, but the students had not, and most had very little idea as to what WWI was all about. There was a similar field trip last year, but I was not in charge, and had never attempted anything of the sort - I'm an early theatre scholar, not a WWI historian.

At Tyne Cot Cemetery, the first stop, having given them a lot of facts and figures and dates pertaining to this largest of Commonwealth cemeteries, I suggested that they should look for one particular headstone, "IV G.21", to see what was written there. Commemorating 2nd Lieutenant Arthur Conway Young of the Royal Irish Fusilliers; born in Japan, he died aged 26 on 16 August 1917 (my son's birthday, 75 years later); the headstone carries an unusual personal message: “Sacrificed to the fallacy/That war can end war.” That encouraged discussion, but the search itself seemed to help get the students focussed in a way that didn't happen the last time. This group didn't even seem to mind the rain.

At Ypres/Ieper, the rain stopped. We visited both Menin Gate and "In Flanders' Fields" Museum - an excellent venue, where I met some fellow Albertans, active and retired officers on a battlefields tour. I didn't stay long, since I'd seen it before, but the students did, really looking at things. After an excellent supper, we got to attend the playing of Last Post and the laying of wreaths by a New Zealand delegation, back at a now-crowded Menin Gate. And there was a solo piper (in trews).

As the students boarded the bus to return to Lille, many made a point of telling me how much the trip meant to them, having had no clue in advance that it would mean anything at all.

And a couple of guys asked me where they might get a kilt ...

I'd call that a successful field trip.