Visiting Vimy

When I was child, my Dad talked about the First World War. He was an impressionable young boy of 10 in 1916 and one of the things he recalled was his despairing worry about the horses that were loaded on the train, in our small home town, to be taken to Europe for the war. I can see him; a skinny kid in breeches, possibly with his twin brother by his side and no doubt my Grandfather who was a man of horses, watching that terrible loading. Horses seem to have a sense of their fate and they would not have gone up easily into those train cars.  The men and boys who watched, along with the animals, perceived what lay ahead. What we all know now is the fact that boys only 6 or 7 years older than my Father and his brother fought for Queen and country, most likely thinking, as they crossed the Atlantic, they were heading to a grand adventure. When they arrived at the mud-slogged, crater-filled flat fields of northern France it must have been a terrible shock to find the deep tunnels and the trenches sandbagged but water and sludge filled. To visit Vimy is to remember all those 61,000 Canadians who died in the First World War. Vimy is a memorial built by the Canadian people to commemorate and remember forever those countrymen who died and France gave Canada a large piece of land on Vimy Ridge to build it upon. 

We went up today, Dec 19; a visit we wished to make before Christmas. We were alone apart from 2 or 3 other people and a few runners and cyclists who use the park as a quiet trail. It was deeply foggy, cold and damp. I've heard the place-name countless times, Vimy Ridge, but never truly imagined what it would look like. The ridge rises out of the flat land of the Douai Plains, not too high, rising gradually on the western side and dropping more steeply on the eastern. It is treed and extends some 7 km in length and at its highest point rises 145 metres providing a clear and unobstructed view for 10’s of kilometres across the surrounding plains in all directions. The reality of mud filled days and nights, the brutish misery of the rain and constant shelling, barbed wire, bayonets and death is not difficult to imagine at this place.

For the first time at the Battle of Vimy all four Canadian Divisions were brought together with support from British artillery and engineers. Planning was months in the making before the initial attack on the Ridge, long held by the Germans and riddled with underground mines and tunneled fortifications. The soft porous nature of the soil, with a high chalk content, provided stability for the treachery of underground warfare. Author Sebastian Faulks, who wrote the book Birdsong, described the suffocating and frightening nature of these deep tunnels to the point I felt waves of claustrophobia reading it. To see the tunnels and trenches today is to feel that same smothering sense. Craters, now grassy and green, pit the ridge and mines and undetonated armaments still lie beneath the soil, so that the area is totally fenced off except for walking paths. As recently as 1998 a former armament dismantler was working on an explosive that was found buried 22 metres below the surface, when it exploded and took his life.

61,000 Canadians lost their lives in the First World War when Canada’s total population was just greater than 7 million. 172,000 were wounded and many more came home broken in mind and body, suffering shell shock from the horrors they had experienced. No reliable method existed for tracking or treating the psychological casualties, but at that time, with the limited statistics that were gathered, authorities identified 9,000 Canadians as suffering from “shell shock”.

The battle of Vimy lasted 4 days, April 9, 1917 to April 12. By nightfall on April 12, the Canadian Corps was in firm control of the ridge. The corps suffered 10, 602 casualties: 3,598 killed and 7004 wounded.

The following are pictures we took Dec 19, 2016. The Government of Canada will mark the 100^th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy ridge with commemorative ceremonies on April 9, 2017

Through the mist

The stark & striking Memorial designed by Walter Seymour Allward, Canadian architect and sculptor. Chosen from 160 designs submitted to the competition by other Canadians who participated and which was held in the early 1920's

The Male Mourner

Names Remembered

Names Remembered

Families Search for the Names of Relatives

Names Remembered

Against the overcast sky

The Allegorical Figure " Canada Bereft "

Craters

Always moving upward, the Canadian forces prevailed

 Fortified trenches with drains and gravel as examples that are nothing like those the soldiers encountered.

Haunting: Tunnel Engineer Johan Wanderwalle stands inside a water-logged tunnel he explored with the photographer who took this picture. The photo was part on an article on the First World War published in The DailyMail

 

An old east coast family name

Another named marker....most are unnamed

Row upon Row

As Far as the Eye Can See

A Winter Tribute

To Be in this Place is to Understand What Canada Gave

A Solemn Cemetery on a Cold Damp Day

Lives Lived and Remembered

To stand in this place is to feel truly Canadian. I wish that my Father could have seen it too. 

Getting Ready for Santa

Putting out Reindeer Food

Because of Christmas travel I am behind on my posts...but we spent a wonderful Christmas with all the trimmings in the UK with Jim, Blythe and Annabel. We have returned to Lille to new digs; all bright and airy and very pleasant. We head to the barge tomorrow to offload a collection of "stuff" we need for life aboard. That is eventually when we are  onboard! This includes a brand new pair of electric bikes. Better than Santa's sleigh I can tell you!