June 6 - Vimy Ridge
This day was probably the best day of my entire trip - or at least, what I will always pinpoint as the most memorable and poignant for me. As I told Min later in Paris, even though we left to see more "famous" and touristy things, my heart was still at Vimy Ridge.
The day was something of a logistical nightmare as we tried to do everything in a very short time frame. It was Min's last day to pack , and we had to do laundry since we didn't have the car the day before, and it was an hour's drive to Vimy. I won't bother going into all the details of running around trying to pack and do laundry and buy detergent - it made us very grumpy, and to describe it would simply detract from the important part of the day.
So....Vimy Ridge. The Lonely Planet book described it briefly as one of the many battlefields of WWI - it's near the fields of the Somme where many, many, many battles were lost by the Allies. Vimy Ridge was a place of triumph for the Canadian troops, although the victory came with great losses. The best way to understand the history is to read about it on the website: http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=memorials/ww1mem/vimy
To briefly summarize - Vimy Ridge was a very strategic area of the Douai plain because the top of the ridge (Hill 145) allowed anyone who held to see very far across the plain (hundreds of kms). The Germans captured it early on in the war, and the Allies were unable to retake it until the Canadian troops, fighting as a united Canadian army for the first time ever, fought for and won back the area in April 1917. During the battles, which lasted over a few days, 10,602 Canadians were wounded and 3,598 died.
The Vimy Ridge Memorial is a Canadian National Historic Site, given freely to Canada for its use but still subject to the laws of France. The memorial centre and tours of the underground tunnel system are run by Canadian students. I had read this in Lonely Planet, but when I called ahead to check tour times, I was very pleasantly surprised to hear Canadian voices speaking to me on the other end of the line. Even though I had only been in France for about 2 weeks, as soon as I heard that (English) voice it felt like it had been ages since I'd talked with a fellow Canadian, and I felt very homesick. When we got there, Min and I were soooo excited to hang with the Canadian tour guides - there's just something about Canadians, they feel like home!! Canadians really are some of the awesomest people in the world. They were soooo nice and friendly to us - I tell you it really felt like coming home after a lonely and distant time in a strange land with foreigners.
Anyway, because we got there pretty late we had to be very efficient in our sight-seeing - the grounds at Vimy are extremely extensive and we only had about 2 hours left!! We saved ourselves a spot on the tour of the tunnels, drove back up to the Interpretive Centre, tried to learn the entire history of Vimy Ridge and WWI in 15 minutes, I talked with the student guide at the centre about finding my friends' great-grandfather's grave - an apparently impossible task unless you know the name of the cemetery, which I didn't - but the guide was really nice and helpful. Tip - if you're looking for a grave of a Canadian soldier, or any Commonwealth soldier apparently, use this website: www.cwgc.org (commonwealth graves commission).
Then we ran back down to the tunnels to start our tour (in Canadian English! yay!) which lasted about 45 minutes. Min and I had thought that WWI and Vimy Ridge was a war of trenches - and they played a big part - but also very important were the tunnels, which Canadian miners blasted and dug to create hidden passageways from the back lines to the front lines without the enemy being able to see and monitor their positions. Apparently these tunnel systems were so extensively used by both sides, that it became part of war strategy to dig lower and lower, and under the other party's tunnels, and try and blow the other side's tunnels up so they couldn't use them.
The tour was a very small group, consisted of me & Min representing Canada, 2 older British gentlemen, and a few Frenchies. We got quizzed a bit on the tour about Canadian history in WWI and we failed miserably. How were we supposed to know the names of the guns used? Of course the Brits knew their stuff. The tunnel tours were interesting, we saw remains of shells imbedded in the ceiling, the dugout rooms where the messengers/runners slept (8 at a time in a small space), the same size room for the general/commander (even underground the privileges of rank prevail), etc. The guide said that even today, when it's raining outside, some water leaks into the tunnels (even after modern-day fortification) and it can get very dank and cold - the circumstances would have been even worse for our poor troops during the war, with water flooding the tunnels during rain.
After the tunnel tour we got to explore the trenches a bit - Min had come to Vimy twice before but never to the trenches or tunnels, so it was new for her too. The trenches today were fortified with stone against the walls instead of sandbags, but they still give a pretty clear picture of what the place would have looked like. The terrifying part was that the Canadian front line was only maybe 10-20 metres away from the closest point of the German front line. For all the senseless death, and years of battling back and forth, it was only over a few metres of land.
Here are what the trenches looked like today:
All around the trenches were the craters, which were huge (the pictures can't show how huge these were) pits left by the mortar shell bombs. They're kind of pretty now, all overgrown with grass - but if anyone's seen All Quiet on the Western Front, and remember what those craters looked like in the movie - esp that scene where the young French soldier is dying - these craters looked exactly like that, except for the grass.
(A note on the grass - there were sheep everywhere because in an effort to preserve the grounds as much as possible, they don't use lawnmowers. So they borrow a sheperd's flock of sheep to graze on the memorial grounds and keep the grass somewhat trim.)
After that we started walking from the trenches to the Memorial because by that time the grounds were closed, and although people could still walk around, all the parking lots were closed and we had had to move our car near the Memorial. On our walk back, we came across one of the cemetaries so I had to go try and look for my friend's great-grandfather's grave. Unfortunately I had no luck that day but I found out later, through the commonwealth graves website, that his grave was at Vimy - Vimy has 2 cemetaries so it was probably at the other one. What a shame! I wish I had had time to go see the other cemetary, I might have found it. I hope my friend can one day go and see it for himself. The cemetary we did see was very moving and they even had a guestbook hidden in a little box near the entrance for people to write comments, prayers and thanks. Min and I each wrote a message to commemorate our visit - "lest we forget".
Finally made our way up to the Memorial - completely out of time as Min still had to go back and finish packing - I literally ran up the hill (the memorial is situated right at the top of Hill 145) to see it. It was very beautiful and impressive - seemed like it was all made out of marble but I'm not sure. Since it was the end of the day, there were hardly any people there which made it all the more quiet and reflective. (Except for this group of French teenagers who seemed to be getting ready to set up a picnic! I will never understand how the French can use their national war memorials as recreational parks, no matter how beautiful they are.)
The monument had a lot of symbolic meaning - here is the designer's description of the monument:
"At the base of the strong impregnable walls of defence are the Defenders, one group showing the Breaking of the Sword, the other the Sympathy of the Canadians for the Helpless. Above these are the mouths of guns covered with olive and laurels.
On the wall stands an heroic figure of Canada brooding over the graves of her valiant dead; below is suggested a grave with a helmet, laurels, etc.
Behind her stand two pylons symbolizing the two forces--Canadian and French--while between, at the base of these, is the Spirit of Sacrifice, who, giving all, throws the torch to his Comrades.
Looking up they see the figures of Peace, Justice, Truth and Knowledge, etc., for which they fought, chanting the Hymn of Peace. Around these figures are the shields of Britain, Canada and France. On the outside of the pylons is the Cross."
Here is the inscription on the wall of the monument:
And here is Young Canada, overlooking the Douai plain, from the top of Hill 145 which Canada (and the Allied forces) fought so hard and sacrificed so much to regain. With typical Canadian diplomacy, the tour guide told the group that even though it was Canadians who ultimately won back Vimy Ridge, it was the British generals who developed the strategy and commanded the Canadians, and it was thanks to French efforts in the prior 3 years who dug tunnels and learned hard lessons which may have contributed to our success. You can bet if it was an American victory no credit would be given anywhere.
After that amazing day, we drove back to Lille, walked through the city at dusk (very beautiful) and finished packing and cleaning out Min's place.
Even after almost 2 months since my visit there, my heart still overwhelms with feeling in writing this and remembering our time there. It was a truly beautiful and meaningful experience and I am longing to go back there again. There were other WWI memorials as well, especially on the plains of the Somme where almost the entire Newfoundland regiment was slaughtered due to "friendly fire" and poor tactical planning (I think, due to poor positioning of the guns, and miscommunication of late change in plans, the Allies ended up shooting all their own soliders). I think any Canadian making a trip to France and interested in their war history should definitely visit these places.
I think this poem is a fitting conclusion to this blog entry:
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields."
- John McCrae
The day was something of a logistical nightmare as we tried to do everything in a very short time frame. It was Min's last day to pack , and we had to do laundry since we didn't have the car the day before, and it was an hour's drive to Vimy. I won't bother going into all the details of running around trying to pack and do laundry and buy detergent - it made us very grumpy, and to describe it would simply detract from the important part of the day.
So....Vimy Ridge. The Lonely Planet book described it briefly as one of the many battlefields of WWI - it's near the fields of the Somme where many, many, many battles were lost by the Allies. Vimy Ridge was a place of triumph for the Canadian troops, although the victory came with great losses. The best way to understand the history is to read about it on the website: http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=memorials/ww1mem/vimy
To briefly summarize - Vimy Ridge was a very strategic area of the Douai plain because the top of the ridge (Hill 145) allowed anyone who held to see very far across the plain (hundreds of kms). The Germans captured it early on in the war, and the Allies were unable to retake it until the Canadian troops, fighting as a united Canadian army for the first time ever, fought for and won back the area in April 1917. During the battles, which lasted over a few days, 10,602 Canadians were wounded and 3,598 died.
The Vimy Ridge Memorial is a Canadian National Historic Site, given freely to Canada for its use but still subject to the laws of France. The memorial centre and tours of the underground tunnel system are run by Canadian students. I had read this in Lonely Planet, but when I called ahead to check tour times, I was very pleasantly surprised to hear Canadian voices speaking to me on the other end of the line. Even though I had only been in France for about 2 weeks, as soon as I heard that (English) voice it felt like it had been ages since I'd talked with a fellow Canadian, and I felt very homesick. When we got there, Min and I were soooo excited to hang with the Canadian tour guides - there's just something about Canadians, they feel like home!! Canadians really are some of the awesomest people in the world. They were soooo nice and friendly to us - I tell you it really felt like coming home after a lonely and distant time in a strange land with foreigners.
Anyway, because we got there pretty late we had to be very efficient in our sight-seeing - the grounds at Vimy are extremely extensive and we only had about 2 hours left!! We saved ourselves a spot on the tour of the tunnels, drove back up to the Interpretive Centre, tried to learn the entire history of Vimy Ridge and WWI in 15 minutes, I talked with the student guide at the centre about finding my friends' great-grandfather's grave - an apparently impossible task unless you know the name of the cemetery, which I didn't - but the guide was really nice and helpful. Tip - if you're looking for a grave of a Canadian soldier, or any Commonwealth soldier apparently, use this website: www.cwgc.org (commonwealth graves commission).
Then we ran back down to the tunnels to start our tour (in Canadian English! yay!) which lasted about 45 minutes. Min and I had thought that WWI and Vimy Ridge was a war of trenches - and they played a big part - but also very important were the tunnels, which Canadian miners blasted and dug to create hidden passageways from the back lines to the front lines without the enemy being able to see and monitor their positions. Apparently these tunnel systems were so extensively used by both sides, that it became part of war strategy to dig lower and lower, and under the other party's tunnels, and try and blow the other side's tunnels up so they couldn't use them.
The tour was a very small group, consisted of me & Min representing Canada, 2 older British gentlemen, and a few Frenchies. We got quizzed a bit on the tour about Canadian history in WWI and we failed miserably. How were we supposed to know the names of the guns used? Of course the Brits knew their stuff. The tunnel tours were interesting, we saw remains of shells imbedded in the ceiling, the dugout rooms where the messengers/runners slept (8 at a time in a small space), the same size room for the general/commander (even underground the privileges of rank prevail), etc. The guide said that even today, when it's raining outside, some water leaks into the tunnels (even after modern-day fortification) and it can get very dank and cold - the circumstances would have been even worse for our poor troops during the war, with water flooding the tunnels during rain.
After the tunnel tour we got to explore the trenches a bit - Min had come to Vimy twice before but never to the trenches or tunnels, so it was new for her too. The trenches today were fortified with stone against the walls instead of sandbags, but they still give a pretty clear picture of what the place would have looked like. The terrifying part was that the Canadian front line was only maybe 10-20 metres away from the closest point of the German front line. For all the senseless death, and years of battling back and forth, it was only over a few metres of land.
Here are what the trenches looked like today:
All around the trenches were the craters, which were huge (the pictures can't show how huge these were) pits left by the mortar shell bombs. They're kind of pretty now, all overgrown with grass - but if anyone's seen All Quiet on the Western Front, and remember what those craters looked like in the movie - esp that scene where the young French soldier is dying - these craters looked exactly like that, except for the grass.
(A note on the grass - there were sheep everywhere because in an effort to preserve the grounds as much as possible, they don't use lawnmowers. So they borrow a sheperd's flock of sheep to graze on the memorial grounds and keep the grass somewhat trim.)
After that we started walking from the trenches to the Memorial because by that time the grounds were closed, and although people could still walk around, all the parking lots were closed and we had had to move our car near the Memorial. On our walk back, we came across one of the cemetaries so I had to go try and look for my friend's great-grandfather's grave. Unfortunately I had no luck that day but I found out later, through the commonwealth graves website, that his grave was at Vimy - Vimy has 2 cemetaries so it was probably at the other one. What a shame! I wish I had had time to go see the other cemetary, I might have found it. I hope my friend can one day go and see it for himself. The cemetary we did see was very moving and they even had a guestbook hidden in a little box near the entrance for people to write comments, prayers and thanks. Min and I each wrote a message to commemorate our visit - "lest we forget".
Finally made our way up to the Memorial - completely out of time as Min still had to go back and finish packing - I literally ran up the hill (the memorial is situated right at the top of Hill 145) to see it. It was very beautiful and impressive - seemed like it was all made out of marble but I'm not sure. Since it was the end of the day, there were hardly any people there which made it all the more quiet and reflective. (Except for this group of French teenagers who seemed to be getting ready to set up a picnic! I will never understand how the French can use their national war memorials as recreational parks, no matter how beautiful they are.)
The monument had a lot of symbolic meaning - here is the designer's description of the monument:
"At the base of the strong impregnable walls of defence are the Defenders, one group showing the Breaking of the Sword, the other the Sympathy of the Canadians for the Helpless. Above these are the mouths of guns covered with olive and laurels.
On the wall stands an heroic figure of Canada brooding over the graves of her valiant dead; below is suggested a grave with a helmet, laurels, etc.
Behind her stand two pylons symbolizing the two forces--Canadian and French--while between, at the base of these, is the Spirit of Sacrifice, who, giving all, throws the torch to his Comrades.
Looking up they see the figures of Peace, Justice, Truth and Knowledge, etc., for which they fought, chanting the Hymn of Peace. Around these figures are the shields of Britain, Canada and France. On the outside of the pylons is the Cross."
Here is the inscription on the wall of the monument:
And here is Young Canada, overlooking the Douai plain, from the top of Hill 145 which Canada (and the Allied forces) fought so hard and sacrificed so much to regain. With typical Canadian diplomacy, the tour guide told the group that even though it was Canadians who ultimately won back Vimy Ridge, it was the British generals who developed the strategy and commanded the Canadians, and it was thanks to French efforts in the prior 3 years who dug tunnels and learned hard lessons which may have contributed to our success. You can bet if it was an American victory no credit would be given anywhere.
After that amazing day, we drove back to Lille, walked through the city at dusk (very beautiful) and finished packing and cleaning out Min's place.
Even after almost 2 months since my visit there, my heart still overwhelms with feeling in writing this and remembering our time there. It was a truly beautiful and meaningful experience and I am longing to go back there again. There were other WWI memorials as well, especially on the plains of the Somme where almost the entire Newfoundland regiment was slaughtered due to "friendly fire" and poor tactical planning (I think, due to poor positioning of the guns, and miscommunication of late change in plans, the Allies ended up shooting all their own soliders). I think any Canadian making a trip to France and interested in their war history should definitely visit these places.
I think this poem is a fitting conclusion to this blog entry:
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields."
- John McCrae
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