Some of those bodies still lie under the shell-pocked terrain of the battlefield. Helen Storms of Sydenham, Ont., says, “Seeing shell holes just grassed over gives you a little bit of an idea of the reality.” More shocking was the realization of the vast number of cemeteries throughout French and Belgian battle areas. “We had seen cemeteries in the Normandy area and in Holland during previous trips, but nothing compared to the mass numbers of the First World War. If that doesn’t put you off war, I don’t know what would – the absolute ridiculous slaughter.”
Barb Pratt of Uxbridge, Ont., joined the CARP tour with her brothers, Jim and Wilfred Hewlett of Stouffville, Ont., and Stettler, Alta., respectively. Their father, Pte. Bill Hewlett, an artillery engineer with the 14th Battalion, rarely spoke of his experience during the battle for Vimy Ridge. “I carried a button from his uniform, and my brother had his diary, but we all agreed we weren’t invoking our father as deeply as we had expected. We were more taken with the present events,” she says. “It was the presence of the young people, especially when they came down the hillside (to the ceremonial area below the memorial), respectful but smiling – and youthful. The whole thing brought up feelings of sadness but also of anger.” She adds, “Perhaps as women, we don’t understand men’s eagerness to get involved in warfare.”
There’s frustration in her voice as she continues. “That generation of young men – they were just discarded like trash.”
Here at Vimy, they are at least remembered. Walter Allward’s powerful sculpture pays tribute, with its two white pylons blazing in the brilliant sun symbolizing the forces of Canada and France and its symbolic statues of Faith, Charity, Honour, Peace, Justice, Truth, Knowledge and Sacrifice. Longing and sorrow are unmistakable in the form of the statue of young Canada gazing out toward the Douai plain far below, mourning her lost sons. During the late afternoon ceremony, Sierra Noble, 17, a talented Métis fiddler from Winnipeg captures that grief, cycling it through her violin as she plays “Warrior’s Lament” to a transfixed audience.
“Until this day 90 years ago, this ridge was a symbol of futility and despair,” Queen Elizabeth says in rededicating the monument. Fighting for the first time as a single army, the four divisions of the Canadian Corps (about 100,000 men) had “transformed Vimy Ridge into a symbol of inspiration.” Four Canadians won the Victoria Cross during the battle “though every soldier in the field showed conspicuous bravery,” she notes.
Death in the military is, unfortunately, not a thing of long ago. The day before the April ceremony, six Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan. The Queen’s closing remarks are poignant, beginning with the Canadian casualties of the battle for Vimy Ridge. “To their eternal remembrance, to Canada, to all who would serve the cause of freedom and to those who have lost their lives in Afghanistan, I rededicate this magnificently restored memorial.”
The celebration of the monument’s re-opening was just the beginning of the CARP Travel tour. In the Somme, we arrive close to closing time at the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial, a Canadian National Historic Site. A sympathetic guide takes time to describe the circumstances of July 1, 1916, that led to the near-annihilation of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (798 went to the trenches but 310 were killed or missing in action; 374 were wounded, some of whom later died). The memorial, crowned with a bronze caribou, the emblem of the regiment, honours Newfoundlanders killed during the Great War and bears the names of those for whom there is no known grave.
