Beaumont-Hamel and Shrapnel Hunting

On day 5 of our trip we started our morning in Vimy Ridge (which I talked about here).  After Vimy and a lovely baguette lunch, we went to the second of two Canadian National Historic Sites located out side of our country - Beaumont-Hamel.

The Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial is a memorial site located in the North of France, around 1 hour away from Vimy Ridge.  It is dedicated to the Dominion of Newfoundland forces members killed during World War I.  It is both a preserved battlefield (complete with trenches and rollings fields showing the blasts of the past), a memorials (see the Caribou monument), and a cemetery (Y Ravine Cemetery).  This is the location that the Newfoundland Regiment made an unsuccessful attack in 1916 - the first day of the Battle of the Somme.  This was the Newfoundland Regiments first major engagement (back before they were part of Canada), and it lasted all of 20 minutes before the regiment was wiped out.  The land was purchased by Newfoundland in 1921 to create this memorial, and some of the Somme battlefield has been conserved in this 74 acre park.  There are 814 names honoured here on the memorial, plus the cemetery located as well.

While standing in the battlefield, our guide, Steve, read us two war time poems, both of which really stuck with me.  Imagine looking out on to these fields, and hearing the following words:

Young Fellow My Lad, by Robert William Service

"Where are you going, Young Fellow My Lad,

On this glittering morn of May?"

"I'm going to join the Colours, Dad;

They're looking for men, they say."

"But you're only a boy, Young Fellow My Lad;

You aren't obliged to go."

"I'm seventeen and a quarter, Dad,

And ever so strong, you know."

"So you're off to France, Young Fellow My Lad,

And you're looking so fit and bright."

"I'm terribly sorry to leave you, Dad,

But I feel that I'm doing right."

"God bless you and keep you, Young Fellow My Lad,

You're all of my life, you know."

"Don't worry. I'll soon be back, dear Dad,

And I'm awfully proud to go."

"Why don't you write, Young Fellow My Lad?

I watch for the post each day;

And I miss you so, and I'm awfully sad,

And it's months since you went away.

And I've had the fire in the parlour lit,

And I'm keeping it burning bright

Till my boy comes home; and here I sit

Into the quiet night."

"What is the matter, Young Fellow My Lad?

No letter again to-day.

Why did the postman look so sad,

And sigh as he turned away?

I hear them tell that we've gained new ground,

But a terrible price we've paid:

God grant, my boy, that you're safe and sound;

But oh I'm afraid, afraid."

"They've told me the truth, Young Fellow My Lad:

You'll never come back again:

(OH GOD! THE DREAMS AND THE DREAMS I'VE HAD,

AND THE HOPES I'VE NURSED IN VAIN!)

For you passed in the night, Young Fellow My Lad,

And you proved in the cruel test

Of the screaming shell and the battle hell

That my boy was one of the best.

"So you'll live, you'll live, Young Fellow My Lad,

In the gleam of the evening star,

In the wood-note wild and the laugh of the child,

In all sweet things that are.

And you'll never die, my wonderful boy,

While life is noble and true;

For all our beauty and hope and joy

We will owe to our lads like you."

*Other Poem was called "The Wire," found here. 

From here we went to the ADANAC Cemetery (Adanac = Canada backwards).  It was in this cemetery that we saw the grave of Victoria Cross winner James Richardson, of Chilliwack, BC.  He was a 20 year old Scottish Canadian, and Piper.  In 1916, during the First World War (Battle of Ancre Heights) his company came under intense fire.  Richardson got permission to play his company over the top, and walked up and down the wire playing his pipes, inspiring his company until the position was captured.  James was support to take back a wounded comrade and some prisoners, but realized he left his bagpipes.  He went back to get them, but was never seen again. These bagpipes were lost it, until discovered in 2002 in Scotland at a high school.  They have since been identified and returned to Canada, and can be found in the BC legislature as a reminder of his valour.  

Next door to the Cemetery is a field.  And in this field, if you look hard enough, you can find remnants of World War I.  For most of us, it was tiny little metal balls called shrapnel.  A few of us found some pieces of little more unique.  Sonia was our shrapnel hunter extraordinaire - with her eagle eyes!  But most of the crew managed to find at least 1 souvenir of the war to bring home with them.  It's crazy that it's been 100 years, and yet evidence of the Great War is easily obtained in a farm field in Northern France.  Proof that the effects are war are not easily erased.  

The Last Post

In the small town of Ieper they understand Remembrance. 

Every night at 8:00 PM they have a ceremony they call the last post.  The “Last Post” is actually a bugle call.  A final homage to the fallen, as is tradition in the British Empire and it’s Allies.  In the town of Ieper, under the Menin Gate, which holds the names of 55,000+ missing and fallen soldiers, this ceremony is held every night.  It started in 1928, and has taken place over 30,000 consecutive days. 

In Canada we pay tribute on to the fallen once a year – November 11 – Remembrance Day.  But in Ieper they pay tribute every single day.  The public gathers.  The bugels play.  The soldiers march.  The music echoes throughout the gate.  And many hands take turns laying a wreath at the gate – to remember those who have given so much for those who were yet to come.

Sullivan Heights was honoured to be able to not only attend this ceremony, but to participate in it.  Two of our students, Shiraz and Justin, stood tall and proud as they marched under the gate to lay the wreath. 

This wasn’t my first time in Ieper.  I had attended this ceremony (twice) back in 2013.  And every night it is different.  But in some ways it is always the same.  Close your eyes.  Listen to the bugle.  Remember the fallen.  The more places I visit – the more battlefields I step on and memorial cemeteries I have seen, the more images that flash through my mind as I hear the notes ring out.  There is something about this ceremony – this tradition – that is more rich than words can adequately express.  I wish I could do it justice. 

So for now all I can leave you with is a couple of photos, and a short video of our students paying their respects.

Justin and Shiraz Lay the Wreath:

For a video of the last post (from a previous ceremony), see here: 

And for a video of the extended ceremony from the 30,000 anniversary of the Menin Gate Last post, see here:

Remnants of the Great War

Essex Farm was an awe inspiring site to be sure.  And only the beginning of a long tour focused on World War I and the Ypres Salient Battlefields.  However, all this is heavy and hard to absorb, and sometimes a break is required.  And when in Belgium, a break means a visit to Ledoux Chocolaterie – a small local operation specializing in making Belgian Chocolate!  Here the owner showed us how to make chocolate molds and pralines, and how to temper different types of chocolate.  We also learned the parts of a cocoa fruit (yes – chocolate comes from a FRUIT).  The cocoa powder only into dark chocolate, the cocoa butter into the white chocolate, and of course cocoa with some milk into the milk chocolate.  This led to a LARGE line up to purchase the fresh chocolates before getting back on the great bus.  Definitly not related to our World War I theme, but an excellent stop indeed.

After the chocolate break, the tone returned to somber as we went to Vancouver Corner – site of the St. Julien Memorial.  This memorial, called “The Brooding Soldier” marks the battlefield where 18,000 Canadians withstoof the first German Gas attaches in April 1915.  The Germans used Chlorine gas and the power of the wind to send a cloud across the battlefield to kill and injure soldiers.  This happened right next to the Canadian front in the Belgian battlefields.   Canadians showed great bravery by rising up an depending the section left empty by retreating gassed soldiers.  2000 Fell and lie buried near by this site.  The sculpture came second in the Canadian Battlefield Monument Commision in 1920.  The first place going to the momument built at Vimy Ridge.  This is one of eight memorials erected by Canadians, as granted by the Imperial war Graces Commission.  5 are in France (Vimy Ridge, Bourlon Wood, Courcelette, Dury and Le Quesnel) and 3 in Belgium (here, at Vancouver Corner, at Passchendaele and at Hill 62). The brooding soldier is a beautiful work to commemorate our country and the soldiers to fought to protect our freedoms and the freedoms of others.  Even the landscape tells a story – with shrubbery designed to mimic exploding shells, and gentle greens hovering over the ground to represent the gas. 

After a quick bite at Canadian owned “Family Pizza”, we continued our tour by heading to the Tyne Cot Memorial – home of those lost in the nearby Battle of Passchendaele.  This cemetery holds graces from the UK, Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (also 1 French man and 4 Germans).  11,954 in total; all from 1917-1918.  OF these, 8367 of them are unnamed graves.  This cemetery changed hands a lot during the way – first captured by Australia, then turned graves for Canadians and British, then recaptured by Germany before liberated by Belgium.  It contains the “Cross of Sacrifice” in the center, which is built on top of a German pillbox.  The few original graves are in the middle, unmoved, but surrounded by the more organized graves that came to follow.  There is also a stone wall surrounding the cemetery, the “Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing.”  Similar to Menin Gate in Ieper, this shows the names of those who were missing, and their grave location is unknown.  34,959 names in all.  It can be hard to take in that much loss.  Steve, our guide, spent a lot of time this day trying to explain all the rules that came into place for burying the dead and maintaining these cemeteries.  And even though it has been almost 100 years since the war ended, much time, effort and car is given into honouring those.  It is easy to forget that this generation of students do not fully know or understand war like the generation my grandparents grew up in.  But seeing these graves, and the attention and honour they were given by the caretakers, they were quickly coming to understand the cost.

We left Tyne Cot for Hooge Crater.  This crater is not a bond, but is surrounded by original trenches from the war.  Remnants of the war can be seen all over the property.  This was a change for our students to begin to walk in the paths of the soldiers that came before to start to try and understand what it would have been like.  This was built on in Vimy, and Beaumont-Hamel, and Juno Beach in the days to follow. 

So much was sacrificed. 

In Flanders Fields...

We have all heard it.  We grew up hearing it.  “In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow…”  But how many of us have seen it?

John McRae was a Canadian Doctor stationed in the Ypres area during World War I.  He worked at a medical station near a place we now call Essex Farm, in the Belgian province of Flanders.  And as was popular during the time of World War I, he wrote poetry.  Because dressing stations (or medical stations), often ended up with them being unable to treat many of the soldiers, they were next to cemeteries.  After the war the Commonwealth war graves commission came up with rules to govern how these cemeteries were run.  Which monuments were erected.  The colour of the headstones.  The rules for epitaphs.  And so here we stood.  In the footsteps of John McRae; looking out over the place that once was a battlefield, next to a cemetery of the fallen – some as young as 15 years old.  And right next to the bunker that was used as a medical station, and the field that is used to bury the dead, is a field.  With poppies.  And I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a flower that possesses such power and meaning.  A flower that can quickly stir the heart so deeply and so quickly.  For decades I have been pinning a plastic flower over my heart, in honour of those who died.  But here, in this cemetery, with these wild flowers, it suddenly took on a very different meaning. 

 So we began our day by honouring the dead, and hearing these words spoken out from the place they were written:

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 falling 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.