Cemeteries, Remembrance, and Vimy Ridge

Day 6 was beautiful; bright, warm, and flowering everywhere. This was pleasant because it was a day full of visiting cemeteries and memorials, and the sombre places we visited looked full of light, gardens and trees green and colourful. We started with Maison Blanche German cemetery, and it was very, very different from the commonwealth cemeteries we’d been visiting. Instead of white stone markers, there were row upon row of black iron crosses, with four names to a cross. With over 44,000 men buried there, even with four to a marker they appeared endless from the gate. When we first arrived, it was early in the AM and there was a good deal of fog along the ground even as the sun dissipated it. It was an eerie site, as many of our class remarked, with the black crosses rising out of a thick fog to the new sun. The cemetery was full of trees, though it lacked the neat bordered gardens of the commonwealth sites. There were also occasional large, rough, black stone crosses that marked mass graves. There was a neat walkway, and the crosses and memorials had wreaths of poppies just the same as the commonwealth graves, which was good to see. One interesting thing to note was the occasional Jewish graves. This was a WWI cemetery, so there were some Jewish soldiers in the German army. Instead of a cross, they were the stone markers with a star of David, the soldiers name, rank, serial number, etc. There was never more than one to a Jewish marker, and they were off not quite in line with the other cross markers- not quite the same as the other soldiers.

Maison Blanche

Afterward, we headed to Cabaret Rouge British cemetery, also WWI, where we similarly paid our respects and looked with horror at the thousands upon thousands of white headstones, so many with names unknown. Our last stop before lunch was at the awe-inspiring Notre-Dame de Lorette French cemetery. The cemetery is watched over at all times by an honour-guard of veterans, who stand at the doors to the small chapel, and in the foyer of the great ossuary housing the coffins of many soldiers. It was a large and beautiful monument to far, far too much death. As beautiful and cared for as a cemetery may be, it is still a cemetery, and watching the ages on the stones was an excruciating exercise- so many men (boys, really) our age and younger. 16, 19, 24. It turned my stomach after a while. 

Ossuary at Notre-Dame de Lorette, with Honour Guard

A restaurant nearby to the cemetery provided us with a wonderful, full, french meal. A slice of flaky cheese tart with salad to begin, a steaming  individual crock full of guinea fowl, peas, and potatoes roasted in gravy, followed with raspberry cheese tart and coffee. Despite of (or perhaps because of) our emotional morning full of graves, prayers, and counting the dead, our appetite was sharp and our lunch break was cheerful, and long. After we finished, many of us went back into the cemetery for a last walk through. A few of our number went to visit the nearby trenches, and a few others went to view to section of the cemetery devoted to muslim soldiers, respectfully engraved with their prayers and faced towards Mecca. It was a powerful place.

Sam said a prayer, and we sat and enjoyed the day with Lt. Pawley for a few minutes.

After lunch, we visited Villers Station Cemetery, where we laid a wreath for Norman Howard Pawley. Months ago, a relative of Lieutenant Pawley came to speak with us about our plans and commemorations in Europe, and about her own family experiences with the world wars and connecting with history. We found his grave, laid a wreath, and said a prayer on her families behalf. 
It was also in Villers station cemetery that an interesting thing happened. Looking through the register, Dr. Lemelin found a laminated insert that had been left by someone. It had a typed poem on it, with a grave reference number and a name. The poem, eerily enough, put a long dead finger on precisely why we came to do what we are doing here with these places and monuments.  It was titled ‘remembrance’ and asked what those who remembered would do, in times to come. Would they come and gawp and ‘say silly words’, or would they come quietly, with respect and empathy. We read it aloud by his grave, and hoped that he would see what we were doing as the latter. 

On our way back to Gouy-Sous-Bellone, we stopped and had a poke around an old field where a recent development operation churned up piles of artifacts from the first World War. We found old bullet casings, barbed wire, the end of a trench shovel, and even a bone fragments. An elderly man was combing the area with a metal detector, and had been finding, restoring, and selling artifacts for years. He had even severely injured himself doing so- he had only one arm, the other was lost to some explosive he handled too carelessly while digging. An average of 25 bodies a year are found every spring by farmers across France and Belgium, when fields are being turned. There is a unit responsible for identifying soldiers if they can (they can often only identify nationality, perhaps regiment) and placing them in a commonwealth cemetery, usually with one of the ‘A Soldier of-‘ headstones with the bittersweet epitaph ‘Known Unto God’. 

Barbed Wire

We had another quick poke around some WWI German Bunkers in a small village. The local farmers are actually still using some of the bigger ones as cow sheds at the edge of fields. Most of them are buried deep in the encroaching woods now, though. We all had fun exploring before heading back.

Some of us more than others. -Feat. Sam

We arrived back at our lovely hotel, where our marvellous hosts gave us yet another home cooked french meal, served with bread, wine, and conversation about our day. We prepared for a long day at Vimy Ridge to Follow.

Day 7 was Vimy Day, and bright and early with a packed lunch from our hotel, we were in the bus and off.In no time, we could see the pillars rising in front of us as we approached, and by 9:30 we were walking up the steps, running our hands across the too many names carved in the stone, and, one by one, laying the flowers we had bought in Arras the previous day. 

Vimy in the Distance

We reluctantly made our way to the visitor centre for our 10:00pm tour of the underground tunnels and the trenches that wind their way under and around Vimy. It was deep, cool, and unnerving to think of so many men packed like sardines, waiting for orders in ankle deep mud and rats. 
When we emerged again into the preserved trenches, we had a walk through both the Canadian and the German trenches, seeing the differences. Having been entrenched longer, literally, the German lines were much better dug out and more deeply fortified. They were also dug in a serpentine shape, better protection from shells, rather than the more roughly z shaped Canadian trenches which had been done in more of a hurry. It didn’t prevent us from taking the Ridge, however, to the benefit of the allies. 

After our tour, we walked through the small museum that was the visitor centre, and then went to a Q&A on site with Arlene King, the site director. Our visit with Ms. King was fantastic- it went almost an hour and a half, and she was a wonderful speaker, though a bit fast paced sometimes. She gave us an incredible amount of insight about the benefits and challenges of managing major sites like Vimy and Beaumont, about the political and financial issues about what they can and can’t do on the land without French permission, some of the legal problems they’ve faced, and a lot of information about what they expect over the centennial, and about working for Veterans Affairs and Parks Canada, and how the two units approach preservation and interpretation. It was a long and interesting talk, and we all very much appreciated her taking time to answer all of our questions, and to spend further time privately with those students working on their own research projects.

Speaking of research projects, after a hasty lunch on the bus, it was time to do the other half if what we came to do at Vimy- research. We split into groups or teams with our ‘research instruments’. A five question survey, essentially, about people’s experiences at Vimy and other memorial sites, their demographic, and any other comments. It was a rough day for it for a few reasons. It was a french holiday, so many of the visitors that day didn’t speak english. Also, the weather had turned dark, and a bit chilly, and there was a damp, quickening wind that had ‘something wicked this way comes’ written all over it. Sure enough, about an hour in the skies opened and dark clouds poured rain all over the ridge while those of us assigned to the site and parking lot dove for the bus, and those of us by the trenches ran for the visitor centre. Dr. Lemelin rounded us up and took an interview count- our minimum sample was 20, and we were still short. We waited out the rain, and then split up again to hopefully get a few more before it was time to leave for dinner. Our guide, Phil, a Czech born Australian-raised Frenchman, helped out by translating some french groups for us. After another hour, we had almost 30 interviews. Damp, tired, and probably more than somewhat emotionally exhausted after the last three days of cemeteries and remembrance monuments, we arrived back at our hotel to crash for about two hours before supper. We all needed it, and the next day was an early morning for our day in Arras. 

A bit of Canada in France.