Shelter – "Civilized Man" (1995)

There’s a war in the day

No peace at night

There’s blood on the hands of man

Ieper, Belgium, is referred to as Ypres in most English-language publications.  That’s the French spelling, while Ieper is the Dutch spelling.

Since the city is located in the Flemish half of Belgium – where Dutch is the predominant language – it would seem to make more sense to use the Ieper spelling.

But because the French spelling is more familiar to we English speakers, I will bow to convention and use Ypres.

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There were four major World War I battles fought in the Ypres area.  Those battles resulted in roughly a million soldiers being killed or wounded.  (A previous 2 or 3 lines discussed the three-month-long Third Battle of Ypres – also known as the Battle of Passchendaele – which was by far the bloodiest of the Ypres clashes.)

Ypres was almost completely destroyed in World War I.  Here’s what the city’s most important building – the Cloth Hall, which was completed in 1304 – looked like just before the war broke out:

By the end of World War I, the Cloth Hall had been almost completely destroyed:

Between 1933 and 1967, the Cloth Hall was carefully reconstructed.  Here’s what it looks like today:

Today, the second floor of the Cloth Hall is the site of the In Flanders Fields Museum.

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St. George’s Memorial Church was built in Ypres to commemorate the hundreds of thousands of British Commonwealth soldiers who died near there in World War I.  

As this photo shows, the church contains numerous memorial stained glass windows, banners, brass wall plaques, and kneelers (i.e., cushions on which members of a congregation kneel during prayers):

Here’s a photo of one of the church’s memorial plaques that commemorate the members of a particular regiment who fell at Ypres:

A number of those plaques commemorate the dead graduates of different British schools.  This one commemorates the 144 former students at the Barnard Castle School –“Old Barnardians” – who died in World War I.  (Barnard Castle School, which was founded as an boys-only school in 1883, is located in a small market town in northeastern England.)

Here are photos of some of the more than 150 St. George’s kneelers, most of which are embroidered with the insignia of some of the many different British Commonwealth military units that fought in the Ypres area in World War I:

Here’s the kneeler that honors the Suffolk Regiment, an infantry regiment with a history dating back to 1685 that suffered hundreds of casualties at the Second Battle of Ypres:

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Almost 80 punk bands performed at the three-day Ypres Hardcore Fest last week.  

Shelter, which was the featured band on the festival’s first day, has been referred to as a “Krishnacore” group because of the Hare Krishna-inspired messages in its songs.

Today’s featured song asserts that wars will never end unless “civilized” man stops slaughtering animals for meat:

The meateater kills the cows 
They depersonalize to justify

Their own lust as the helpless die

It’s ironic how we cry for world peace

But the violence won’t decrease
Unless our murders cease

Click here to listen to “Civilized Man.”

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