Mark Connelly教授肯特开云体育主頁(欢迎您)大学开云体育app客服
我第一次去伊普尔是在1987年春天一个寒冷潮湿的日子。我还记得格罗特市场和布艺大厅，它的柱廊沿着它的东面。我的记忆也带来了一种空虚感。在我的脑海里，格罗特市场空荡荡的。在我的记忆中，没有汽车停在那里，没有公共汽车在周围行驶，只有一个巨大的空间，在细雨中闪闪发亮。七月中旬我又回来了，我的记忆里还是一个安静、安静的小地方。我记得我走到Menin门，在大东门廊对面的街角上，有几家非常普通、不起眼的小商店。我想其中一个是杂货店或肉店。当然，我这次访问的时机非常有趣，因为当时正值第三次伊普尔战役爆发70周年前夕。然而，几乎没有迹象表明有什么特别的计划。 I can’t remember any notices giving details of special events or parades. All seemed immensely low-key. This is not to say that the people of Ypres were indifferent to the war and the impending anniversary, far from it. Anyone who has ever visited the city will know that at 8pm every evening buglers sound the Last Post under the great barrel vault of the Menin Gate, or the Hall of Memory as its designer, Sir Reginald Blomfield, so poignantly labelled it. It is a simple, but deeply moving act of respectful commemoration. No, the point I am making is that although the swelling tide of the Great War renaissance was well under way, it had not yet brought vast numbers of British people, especially school groups, on visits.
伊普尔的Menin门
几年以后，我又去了伊普尔——事实上，可能有五六年了。我一回来就感到震惊。Meninlaan现在是一条时尚精品店和商店的道路。格罗特市场要繁忙得多，那里有停车场系统。去参加“最后一份工作”的仪式不再是相对晚到、选好地点的事了，而是需要至少提前15分钟到达。从那以后，我越来越频繁地访问伊普尔，我也成为了这一现象的一部分，英国和英联邦国家的游客，尤其是澳大利亚人、加拿大人和新西兰人，涌入这座城市，参观大门，在最后一份工作的仪式上激动地站着，参观布艺馆的博物馆……买巧克力锡头盔，喝美味的当地啤酒，吃同样美味的贻贝和薯条。现在，游客的数量意味着“最后一份礼物”仪式的时间安排更加谨慎。要想看得清楚，至少要提前45分钟到达。现在，学校、英国军团(British Legion)或军团协会等团体的敬献花圈活动几乎每天都在进行，夏季的几个月里，人们都能挤得满满的。至于在停战日参观，尤其是在周末，游客很可能根本看不到梅宁门，因为他们被迫在格罗特市场附近找了个地方。
然而，我们都在那里是为了什么?是什么让我们来到这个迷人、友好的西弗兰德斯城市?显然，试图确定每位访问者的动机是什么是不可能的。然而，可以提出一些笼统的建议。数字通信的巨大优势和结果之一是信息和记录的可用性。反过来，这使得家谱调查变得容易得多，考虑到武装部队非常官僚的程序，我们都更有可能找到曾经服兵役的家庭成员。那么，鉴于伊普尔在一战英国军事经历中无处不在，许多人发现他们的亲戚在突出部服役，甚至可能死亡，也就不足为奇了。接下来是一战本身的神秘魅力。是什么让它如此牢牢地抓住了我们的想象力?也许这与嫉妒有关? In our world of cynicism, information coming at us from all angles bearing many different, often contradictory, messages at once, the men who went off to war in 1914 are bathed in a glorious light of certainty. No matter what became of them later, our hearts tell us that they signed up because they believed totally and utterly in the cause. Unconditional belief in a cause: how wonderful that seems. We also have the bitter-sweet sensations of power through knowledge of their fate which we often translate into a journey starting in innocence but often ending in brutal experience. We can pity them, and that gives power, but also makes us feel strangely powerless. If only we had a time machine, we could go back and warn them, tell them what we know and how they might avoid their fate. But we don’t, and so desperately feel the need to do something. We can go to where they served, suffered and perhaps died. We can stand there and conjure up some kind of communion with them. This is clearly an emotional journey with very little hard-headed, rational thinking about it, but emotions are powerful motivators and the visit to Ypres is often seen as the way of assuaging, or even exorcising, them.
虽然我是一名职业历史学家，享有研究和教授历史的特权，但当我去伊普尔时，我绝对能感受到它的情感吸引力，它经常直接冲击我的思想和感受。出于同样的原因，我对这座城市本身的痴迷，与它之外的前战场相比，与其说是它的战时状态，不如说是它从战争结束到1939年发生的事情。我着迷于当地人如何回到这座破碎的城市，并开始重建他们的房屋、企业、职业和生活。令我着迷的是，他们住在木制的预制平房里。让我着迷的是，几乎是在一瞬间，旅游业发展起来，人们开始参观废墟和战场。当我去伊普尔时，我不顾一切地寻找它们的迹象;想想他们可能去过的地方，他们可能遇到的人，他们买的纪念品，他们带回家的回忆。我想更多地了解那些决定把伊普尔当作自己家园的英国人。到20世纪20年代中期，他们的数量已经足够建造一所学校，让游客注意到一个永久的英国社区的存在。正是出于这个原因，我很高兴能写一本书，探讨这些想法和问题。 Ypres gets under the skin alright, but how much of that is because of what we impose on it by what is in our head and how much is because of real ghost inherent in the very fabric of the place, I really don’t know.
阅读更多有关Menin门和其他战争纪念碑在英联邦战争坟墓委员会网站:www.cwgc.org
