In memory of Beaumont-Hamel, July 1, 1916

I've written a few pieces about our visits to the great battle-grounds of the First World War in France and Belgium: here, here, here. I've covered Vimy Ridge, other areas of the Somme, Ypres.

One of the most moving stops on our tour was at Beaumont-Hamel. It was there, on July 1, 1916, that more than 800 members of the First Newfoundland Regiment — later the Royal Newfoundland Regiment — were sent over-the-top straight into a storm of German machine guns. Only 68 were able to answer roll call the next morning. It was one of the deadliest days in the history of modern warfare.

The day we visited the battle site, it had been raining off and on and the grass and path-ways were wet. Our tour guide is a historian and author and he makes a point of knowing where the people on his tour are from. He tailors his tour accordingly. Because we're Atlantic Canadians, he gave us a detailed tour of Beaumont-Hamel and spent a lot of time explaining the battle and the advantages that the Germans had arranged for themselves.

The land where the battle took place was bought by the Government of Newfoundland in 1921. It's had some restoration work done and it's now maintained by the Veterans' Affairs Department of the Government of Canada.

It wasn't an easy walk, through the wet ground, up and down trench slopes, into and out of shell holes — but it wasn't bad enough to even come close to what it must have been like then. It's hard to picture and it's hard to think about.

At the end of every war, it becomes a challenge to be able to justify it and explain why people gave their lives. It rarely changes much from some variation on, "They gave their lives to preserve our freedom/our values/our way of life." The further we get from the First World War, the easier it is for the historians to acknowledge that it was an ignoble war and there was nothing much to be gained by it.

The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was more than 38 million: there were over 17 million deaths and 20 million wounded, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. The total number of deaths includes about 11 million military personnel and about 7 million civilians.

Beaumont-Hamel affected much of the population in Newfoundland and it is still felt as a raw wound. The dead will be memorialized at the battle-site in France and also back home in Newfoundland and in Ottawa.

Brian McKenna's documentary, Newfoundland at Armageddon, aired on CBC-TV on the eve of the 100th anniversary. It's definitely worth seeing and in this day and age, it will be possible to find it sometime later and watch it. I recommend it.

July 1, as always, is a sad day for Newfoundland. The early part of the day is always spent remembering Beaumont-Hamel and mourning the dead. Later in the day, for those who are so inclined, there's Canada Day to be celebrated.

It's very much a day of mixed feelings, all round.

When years of carnage turn into decades

When we heard the news from Brussels, our first thoughts were for Dan's brother John and our beloved sister-in-law, Ilse. Ilse grew up in a small town near Antwerp and she and John now live in Antwerp. Belgium is a small country though and Brussels is less than an hour from their Antwerp home.

John and his business partner travel a lot and the Brussels airport is a regular part of their working life. Thankfully, our family and friends in Belgium are safe.

This brings the Brussels tragedy close to home for us. Paris too — not because we have family there but we do know people who live there and we've been there not that long ago ourselves. It hits us a little harder because we know the streets and the landscapes and the people's routines.

We need to be reminded though that tragedies like these play out every day in places that don't get the same attention as Paris and Brussels. The big headlines are saved for our big familiar cities and somewhere on page seven, we see the news from more distant lands.

After the attack on Brussels, someone somewhere made this little meme which turned up on Facebook from several different sources. If I knew who made it, I'd be haapy to give credit but I don't. One person who shared it noted that Baghdad was spelled wrong and that San Diego was used instead of San Bernardino. With those two corrections in mind, the information here is worth considering:

Thinking about this took me back to September 11, 2001. As many people do, I remember where I was and what I was doing when the airplanes hit the twin towers in New York. I saw the second one hit the building live on television. I spent the next several days watching TV, listening to radio, reading newspapers soaking up every detail of an attack that was closer to home than we were used to.

A few days after the attack, I managed to find one of the last copies of the black-covered New Yorker on local newsstands.

I read almost everything in that issue but I was particularly struck by the Talk of the Town near the front of the magazine — a series of short essays by writers who had been in New York on that fateful Tuesday. There were contributions from John Updike, Jonathan Franzen, Denis Johnson, Roger Angell, Aharon Appelfeld, Rebecca Mead, Susan Sontag, Amitav Ghosh, and Donald Antrim.

They're all worth reading but after all these years, there's one paragraph that has stayed with me and that I've quoted several times, often on the anniversary of September 11. It's from the essay by Denis Johnson, a writer who in the years preceding 2001 had reported from Somalia, Afghanistan, the southern Philippines, Liberia — among other so-called "hot spots" around the world. He writes that he wondered what it would be like if he had to do such reporting in his own land, how he would feel and react. And here he was, after seeing and hearing and writing about so much horror in other parts of the world, experiencing the violence and suffering and carnage here at home.

It was his last paragraph that has haunted me all these years:

On Thursday, as I write in New York City, which I happened to be visiting at the time of the attack, the wind has shifted, and a sour electrical smoke travels up the canyons between the tall buildings. I have now seen two days of war in the biggest city in America. But imagine a succession of such days stretching into years — years in which explosions bring down all the great buildings, until the last one goes, or until bothering to bring the last one down is just a waste of ammunition. Imagine the people who have already seen years like these turn into decades — imagine their brief lifetimes made up only of days like these we’ve just seen in New York.

The very thought of it breaks my heart. "Imagine a succession of such days stretching into years . . ."

If you want to read the whole Talk of the Town, you can find it here.

Canada Bereft: In the right place

The Canada Bereft statue at the Vimy Memorial in France is also called Mother Canada and sometimes, Mother of Canada. She looks bereft and you can feel sad just being near her.

“Mother Canada” or “Canada Bereft”: A female figure draped in a cloak stands alone on the wall at the north-eastern side of the memorial. She bows her head and is looking down at a stone sarcophogus, representing Canada's war dead, at the base of the 24 foot (7.3 metres) wall below her. The magnificent view across the Douai plain and the location of the old enemy of the time spreads out before her. This figure is called Mother Canada or Canada Bereft, representing the nation of Canada mourning for her dead. The figure was carved from a single 30 tonne block of limestone.

The memorial is vast and she is very much to scale. She's overwhelming only in the compassion she engenders.

Compare her to this:

This is the statue – also called "Mother Canada" – proposed for Green Cove in Cape Breton Highlands National Park. It is the subject of much controversy not least because it's so ugly – a monstrosity, it's often called. It's also planned to be located in a National Park and it's a blatantly commercial venture, masquerading as a site to honour Canadian soldiers who didn't come home from the wars.

Those are all legitimate reasons to shut down this awful project and there's another good one. The statue in France stands in the middle of a battlefield. She's surrounded by graveyards and numerous reminders of the tragedies she's mourning. She's part of something much larger than herself.

She's so moving because she's in the right place.

And let me add this assurance – with definite reference to the commercial plans for the monstrosity – there is no Canada Bereft Gift Shop anywhere in sight.

In Memory of Their 60,000 Dead . . .

I don't know if I really buy the mythology about Vimy Ridge – the often-quoted assertion that the battle was a defining moment for Canada, "when the country emerged from under the shadow of Britain and felt capable of greatness." It sounds a bit romanticized to me, the kind of emotion I try to avoid when looking at wars.

But it doesn't really matter what I think about it. The Battle of Vimy Ridge is a major part of our history. I've known veterans of that battle – gone now, of course – and as we so often do when we look back, I wish I had asked more questions about it. I wish I had known which questions to ask.

We visited the Vimy battlefield a few weeks ago. As always – as I've described here – I can't imagine the scene as it must have been. I can't imagine it because I can't conceive of it.

It looks like this now. We know it didn't look like this then.

It's a very peaceful site which seems appropriate. People are quiet. You get the impression they're trying to absorb the history that surrounds them. But maybe I'm reading too much into the atmosphere.

I've seen lots of pictures of the cemeteries – you have too – but I'm not sure any number of pictures can prepare you for the endless fields of graves – not only the Vimy cemeteries but the cemeteries that cover miles and miles of surrounding countryside.

The Vimy Memorial is instantly recognizable and is as impressive as everyone has told you. It's very very big; it dominates the surrounding landscape and commands careful attention from all sides. It's made up of many sculptures, all of them with symbolic – mostly religious – meaning.

The Canadian Memorials are all seen to be expressions of grief and mourning unlike some of the national monuments which are seen to depict triumph and victory. In keeping with the religious imagery,

"the figure of 'Canada mourning her fallen sons' makes a clear reference to traditional images of the Mater Dolorosa (the Virgin Mary in mourning)."

Most of the people I knew who served in the wars didn't talk about it – not about the bad stuff. We have to try to understand it outside the history books through the trenches, the tunnels, the exhibits, the graves, the memorials. It's a representation of history, an album of pictures that's put been put together with love and respect and with much dignity. There's an air of sadness all around but enduring the sadness is surely the least we can do.

Peace be with you

The Women in Black (London) hold a vigil every Wednesday from 6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. around the statue of Edith Cavell, just near St Martin's church and Trafalgar Square. They've rarely missed a Wednesday since 2003. It was Wednesday when we happened to be walking in that neighbourhood on our recent trip to London and we saw the women there.

Women in Black is a world-wide network of women committed to peace with justice and actively opposed to injustice, war, militarism and other forms of violence.

When I saw the Women in London that day, I remembered the times I stood with the Women in Black in Halifax, in front of the Old Halifax Library. The vigils were silent. We simply stood there, holding placards, handing out the material we'd brought along.

The one I remember most clearly was as the First Gulf War was beginning in 1990.

Early on the morning of January 17, 1991, a massive U.S.-led air offensive hit Iraq’s air defenses, moving swiftly on to its communications networks, weapons plants, oil refineries and more. The coalition effort, known as Operation Desert Storm, benefited from the latest military technology, including Stealth bombers, Cruise missiles, so-called “Smart” bombs with laser-guidance systems and infrared night-bombing equipment. The Iraqi air force was either destroyed early on or opted out of combat under the relentless attack, the objective of which was to win the war in the air and minimize combat on the ground as much as possible.

It's always difficult to be a pacifist in Halifax but particularly so when a new war is getting underway. We were called some very unpleasant names as we stood quietly.

I went into my archives to see what I might have written at that time about fighting for peace in a time of war. I was a columnist with The Daily News and this, in part, was one thing I wrote around that time:

I find it disheartening that the people who are anti-war, the people who work actively for peace have been put into a position where they feel almost apologetic about their opinion.

In order to avoid complete alienation from neighbours and acquaintances, some people who are for peace feel they must preface their every anti-war statement with something about supporting the troops: "I'm against the war but I support our troops, I'm proud of our boys and girls serving their country."

The other obligatory remark for people who speak against the war is a denunciation of Saddam. You have to acknowledge that you know how bad he is ("Many things are true even if George Bush says them," writes author Todd Gitlin in The Village Voice.) So you have to say, "I agree Saddam is a monster but..."

The question we should be asking ourselves is: how have we come to this? Where has this upside-down world come from, where values are so screwed up that it has become impossible to say you're against the war simply because you believe war is wrong.

Why has the use of war to settle international conflicts become the norm and people who oppose war have become The Other – marginalized by society?

Peace activists are harassed on the streets and called "traitor." Anti-war demonstrations are ignored or played down by the media. The people who march are portrayed as pie-in-the-sky dreamers or old hippies. Censorship is accepted with nary a whimper of protest. News reporters who normally talk about "objectivity" as if it were a sacrament, suddenly pepper their reports with "we" and "they."

All this because, all facts aside, at some deep and primal level, war is seen to be noble. It's usually mentioned in the same breath with democracy, freedom and God. To be against it then, is to be against democracy, freedom and God.

So you can be in favour of the war – just because. But if you're against the war, you'd better be prepared to qualify it, justify it, and apologize for it. Even still, you'll be a pariah.

The long memories of Ypres

I'm not comfortable mythologizing the wars. I'm always a little worried that we're still, on some level, celebrating and living the wars vicariously through sad memories. It's a fine line we walk to honour those who were there while trying to separate them from the immoral circumstances that sent them there.

The official memorials along the Western Front manage this well, avoiding morbidity and mawkishness and expressing true grief.

One of the most moving memories we have of Ieper (Ypres) in Belgium was our visit to the Menin Gate. It's one of four British and Commonwealth memorials to the missing in the battlefield area of the Ypres Salient in Belgian Flanders. The memorial bears the names of 54,389 officers and men from United Kingdom and Commonwealth Forces (except New Zealand and Newfoundland) who fell in the Ypres Salient before 16th August 1917 and who have no known grave.

The names of Canadians lost here are overwhelming to a Canadian – as names from other Commonwealth countries must be to their people. (If you click on the photos to enlarge, you'll be able to read the names.)

There's something so forlorn about "no known grave." So many of those lost were just boys.

So many of the names were familiar to us – common names from the Nashwaak Valley and the Miramichi area of New Brunswick, from Pictou County and Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, and from other places that we identify with.

Every single evening, 365 days a year, people gather inside the Menin Gate – sometimes a large crowd, sometimes very few people – to hear the volunteer Fire Brigade band play The Last Post.

"From 11th November, 1929 the Last Post has been sounded at the Menin Gate Memorial every night and in all weathers. The only exception to this was during the four years of the German occupation of Ypres from 20th May 1940 to 6th September 1944. The daily ceremony was instead continued in England at Brookwood Military Cemetery, Surrey. On the very evening that Polish forces liberated Ypres the ceremony was resumed at the Menin Gate, in spite of the heavy fighting still going on in other parts of the town. Bullet marks can still be seen on the memorial from that time."

That's an amazing story.

We were part of this crowd in August of 2011.

I have notes and photos (these are our photos) from our visit to Ypres but I also gleaned a lot of extra information from The Great War website. I recommend it.

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.

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.