A war story. . .with a happy ending

I don't really understand war. I don't mean I don't understand why there are wars. I'm afraid I understand that all too well. What I don't understand is how war is done.

I remember being at Gettysburg, the site of the largest battle of the U.S. Civil War. I was able to go so far as to imagine the thousands of soldiers who had converged here to do battle (helped by a diorama in the interpretive centre which illustrated where the armies were placed) but I couldn't imagine anything after that. I have no understanding of how the generals strategize; I can't comprehend the idea that something like this is learned in special schools.

If I wasn't able to grasp Gettysburg, imagine how I felt visiting the great battlegrounds of World War I in Belgium and the north of France. Even with the best of guides as a teacher, I was often at a loss.

At Vimy

(Don't forget to click on the photos.)

I do understand horror though. When I wrote about books a couple of days ago, I didn't mention Erich Maria Remarque's masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front or Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. Both tell the story of the young people who suffered most from the war. They're powerful works and it's hard to look at war as a noble pursuit after reading their brutal accounts.

We did our tour in France just a few weeks ago with an excellent tour guide. Our family had booked Carl before we ever got to France 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. Karen turned out to be a fellow Canadian (from Vancouver) who had been visiting her daughter in The Hague. She decided to come to Arras to look for the grave of her great-uncle which no member of her family had ever visited.

She had no idea where to start looking for him but we were happy for her to join us on our tour. She was only going to join us for the first couple of stops but our guide was so knowledgeable and interesting that by the time we reached Vimy Ridge, she couldn't resist the tour so she joined us for the day.

Karen and William at the beginning of a series of trenches

I'll come back another day to try to convey the vast range of emotions a person must go through on a day like this but for now, I'll just tell you about the joy.

As we left the hotel in the morning, our guide took Karen's great-uncle’s name and a couple of details about his death. As he took us from place to place – driving us here, walking us there, dropping us off to do some individual exploring – he was also researching and putting two and two together.

In mid-afternoon, he took us to the fairly new and very impressive Ring of Remembrance.

A new memorial to mark 100 years since the start of World War One has been inaugurated in northern France with the aim of focusing attention, not on the nations involved, but the individuals.

Wilfred Owen's name is there. So is fellow poet Isaac Rosenberg's.

There are rows of Smiths, and Wrights, and even some Camerons, but also Fleisches, Ernsts and Mullers.

There Karen found her great-uncle's name. We all were mesmerized looking at names, only able to take in a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of names there.

We still had other stops to make but before the day was over, Carl took us to the cemetery where Karen's great-uncle was buried and she was able to visit his named grave. It was one of those things that was somehow meant to happen. She would never have found that grave, among the hundreds of thousands, without our guide. It was a very emotional experience for her and we were so grateful to be with her.

William took photos of her with her own camera, standing next to the gravestone – as he had earlier when she found the name at the Ring of Remembrance. We all hugged and we all got a little teary. We were all just blown away by the trouble Carl had taken and by his expertise in locating this grave having been given just a few simple clues.

That evening, we waited in the lobby of our hotel for Karen as we had all decided to have dinner together. Karen was a few minutes late; she had been busily on her lap-top, emailing photos to family members. It was something she had never expected to do and we were so very happy for her.