A stroll around Arras

It would be possible to feel quite sad in the areas of the north of France that were the sites of so much death and destruction and are the final home of so many of the young people who went to war. I thought a lot when I was there about the collective memory of the towns — how the past must permeate even today's generation and the small children growing up there, surrounded as they are by so many reminders of what took place there.

But maybe I'm projecting and maybe if one lives there, it's so much a part of life that it has less effect on the residents than it has on the visitors.

The fact is, the people who live in Arras live in a very attractive town and the people whom we saw out on the streets, in the restaurants, in the shops seemed to be enjoying life so what can I say?

Because the weekend has come and I've had a disorganized and distracted day, I'll just share some photos with you. Our tour guide said, in his opinion, Arras has one of the prettiest town squares in all of France. The town squares are surrounded by a unique architectural ensemble of 155 Flemish-Baroque-style townhouses. The Town Hall belfry is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

What do you think of Arras?

Memories of war

I came away from our tour of the great World War I battlefields and memorials in the north of France knowing more but understanding less. Looking at the unending fields of graves as we drove through – hundreds of thousands of graves, often as far as the eye could see – left me, as always, in the dark about the fascination with war across the generations.

I cared deeply about the young men – 16- and 17- and 18-year-olds – who had gone happily to fight for King and Country – and whose gravestones in France often represent a whole family or a whole street or a whole neighbourhood of boys who enlisted together, who travelled together and who were killed together, same day, same battle.

We had an excellent tour guide in France. Our family had him booked and he was picking us up at our hotel in Arras when another hotel guest overheard him asking at the desk for us and heard why he was there. When we joined him, she chatted with us – she turned out to be a fellow Canadian (from Vancouver) whose daughter is living in The Hague and she was visiting there. She decided to come to Arras to look for the grave of her great-uncle which no member of her family had ever visited.

To make a long story short, we were happy for her to join us on our tour and our guide was so great, he took that great-uncle’s name and a couple of details about his death and before the end of the day, he took us to the fairly new and very impressive Circle of Memory where Karen found her great-uncle’s name.

For our last stop, our guide took us to the cemetery where Karen’s great-uncle was buried and she was able to visit his named grave. It was quite amazing. She never would have found that grave, among the hundreds of thousands, without our guide. William took photos of her at the grave and by that evening, she had sent them to her family. It was a moving experience for all of us and we were glad to be there, to share it with Karen.

I’ll be back in the days to come with more about our often heartrending tour of World War I sites.