Remembrance

The grim first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine brought us to reflect on the devastation and human cost of war. We are neither military history buffs nor World War 1 enthusiasts. More like the opposite: we don’t even watch war movies. Nevertheless, we visited northern France in 2003 because we thought it was important to see the Vimy Memorial to help us understand the significance of the Canadian victory at Vimy Ridge.

Vimy is often associated with the coming of age of Canada as a country as it claimed its place on the international scene. That recognition even earned Canada the opportunity to be a signatory to the Versailles Peace Treaty, despite still being a Dominion of the British Empire at the end of the war. Vimy Ridge has become like a legend, with its noble lessons. Several schools, streets and at least one bridge in Canada have been called after Vimy Ridge.

The old grainy photographs we took at the time of our visit to Vimy and other nearby sites, still conjure up the feelings of sorrow and respect that we had felt standing in front of the war memorials and looking at the endless lists of names of soldiers whose remains were never found or identified. (See video slideshow below)

During our visit, we walked in some of the chalky underground tunnels that were central to the war strategy and saw the rusty equipment left behind. (What could it have been like to be lying in wait for the attack?). We looked at trenches and the fields still deformed by shelling and underground explosions that took place so long ago. We strolled pensively through some of the impeccably maintained war cemeteries. The “green fields of France” is not an exaggeration: cemeteries were established where soldiers died and they often are located in the middle of farmlands.

Today, the battlefields are green and fertile and are grazed by oblivious sheep. However, there are still unexploded shells buried in the ground. This is why access to some areas around Vimy is limited for the security of visitors. Human remains are still sometimes found at the time of ground excavation, as was the case in 2014 during improvements to the Visitor Education Centre at Vimy.

There is an overwhelming number of memorials and cemeteries all over Europe associated with the Great War… which did not, in fact, end all wars. Our goal during our short trip was to focus on four Memorials that are meaningful to us. 

Canadian National Vimy Memorial

Prior to the Canadian involvement at Vimy, attacks at the site had cost the lives of 200,000 French, English and Moroccan soldiers. During the 6-day battle (April 7-12, 1917), a hundred thousand Canadians fought from trenches, dugouts and tunnels. Approximately 3,600 died. But this battle was not the end of the war. There would be 66,000 Canadian casualties associated with the First World War.

There are 11,285 names on the Memorial: names of those who died in France and those whose resting place had not yet been identified at the time it was erected. Eight of the twenty sculptures represent:  Peace (the highest one), Justice, Faith, Honour, Hope, Charity, Truth, and Knowledge. The largest sculpture is that of Canada Bereft. It represents Canada, a young nation mourning her dead. It is carved from a single, 30-tonne block of stone. Six thousand Canadians veterans and their families made the pilgrimage by ship to the memorial site for its unveiling in 1936.

Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial

Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial is a landscaped monument consisting of a rocky and shrubbed hill topped by a bronze caribou, the emblem of the Newfoundland Regiment. The memorial commemorates the losses at Beaumont-Hamel, as well as 820 Newfoundlanders who were killed in the war and have no known grave.

The July 1^st, 1916, battle involving that regiment is forever engraved in the minds of Newfoundlanders. The Regiment lost three quarters of its soldiers in less than 30 minutes. The Beaumont-Hamel Memorial is part of a series of six Great War memorials (known as the Trail of the Caribou) erected in France, Belgium and Turkey. Newfoundland was a separate British Dominion and not yet part of Canada at that time. To this day, July 1 is observed as Memorial Day in Newfoundland-Labrador.

Ulster Memorial Tower

The Ulster Memorial Tower was the first war memorial to be erected on the Western Front. It is a replica of Helen’s Tower, a well-known Ulster landmark. It was unveiled in November 1921 by Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, in the absence of Lord Carson (due to illness). The Tower is dedicated to the “sons of Ulster” in the 36^th Division and in other forces.

Thiepval Memorial

A total of 530,000 Commonwealth service men and women died in France during WW1. The 1916 Battle of the Somme was site of one of the bloodiest battles of that war. Not surprisingly, in the Somme area alone, there are 450 Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemeteries and memorials. The Thiepval Memorial is the largest Memorial to the Missing in the world. The Memorial bears the names of over 72,000 soldiers of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died during that battle and have no known grave.