VImy Ridge and the Trench and Tunnel Tours

When I was an exchange student in Arras, my father came to visit and we went to tour the Battlefields. It wasn't something I was particlarly interested in, but my dad's grandfather had been with the Canadians on the Western Front from February, 1915 to November, 1918 with only a few intervals in the hospital (from being gassed at St. Julien) so he had always wanted to go.

My great-grandfather, Murdo Nicolson, was in the front trenches at St. Julien (1st Ypres, April 1915) The Somme, (July 1916) Passchendaele (August-October, 1917) and a few smaller battles, including Arras and the Aisne. He was in the reserve trenches at Vimy Ridge (April, 1917) at Mont St. Eloi, where you can see ruined white towers left over from the French Revolution's closing of the monasteries.

Mont St Eloi was also where the French artillery had set up shop, giving them the only ground higher than Vimy within firing range.

The memorial that stands on Vimy Ridge is, without question, the most beautiful war memorial that I have ever seen. Of any war. As you approach it from the rear, you see two mourning figures (one on each side of the steps). THe memorial seems to soar away from you, straight up into the sky. When we came in 2005 we couldn't go to the memorial because it was closed for cleaning-- and what a difference that made! It's bright white, and against a blue sky with the sun shining it gleams like a beacon. On the front tower of the memorial, you see a dying soldier passing the torch to what looks like an angel.
Standing below the tower at the edge of the wall, lookin down at the fallen soldier's tomb, stands "Mother Canada" weeping for her lost sons. It's incredibly moving, and I defy anyone with the proper sense of reverence to experience it without tearing up.

The front of the memorial has two sets of stairs leading down to the grass, to the tomb of the fallen soldier. On the bottom front of the memorial, one on each side, stand figures representing scenes: "Defending the weak" and "The breaking of the sword."

On the tomb of the fallen soldier, people have left poppy wreaths, laminated cards, pictures, bouquets, and poppy crosses. I planned ahead this trip and brought little battery-operated LED tealight candles that I could leave anywhere and not cause a fire. I left one at Vimy, one at the statue of the brooding soldier at St. Julien, one at the German cemetery of Langemarck, and one inside Fort Douaumont at Verdun.

We didn't really take photos of each other on this trip (and actually I got really angry at the French family who kept putting their children in cutesy poses all over the monument to take -- get this-- Christmas photos) because it's not really the sort of thing that you pose with light-heartedly. It seemed to all of us to be disrespectful. However my sister took a side shot (unflattering, but oh well) of me, my father, and my brother standing by Mother Canada looking up at the front of the memorial. It shows how it affected us. At this memorial you feel... reverence. Almost like being in a church.
If you can only see a few memorials, Vimy is the top of the list. For general interest, I would also recommend the forts at Verdun and the American cemetery at St Mihiel. If you only have a day? Forget Thiepval, visit Vimy

About a mile away are the preserved Vimy trenches. Here, the Canadians filled sandbags with cement and lined the trenches with them. They also constructed cement duckboards. The effect is slightly jarring, but it's mostly really cool. They needed a low-maintenance way to keep the trenches in a similar condition to when they were built. The British/Canadian trenches are startlingly close to the German trenches. Inside the German front trench, there is a destroyed trench mortar still there. On the Canadian side there are sniper shields still in place.
One of the best things about the Vimy preserved trenches is that you can take a tour of the tunnels that the Canadians used to move up from the rear to the front lines. They waited in the dark tunnels for 36 hrs before the attack. Unfortunately, the tour isn't as cool as the first time I took it. In 2005 when my father and I went, there was a little alcove with random trench and tunnel tools in the corners, AND an unexploded shell halfway through the ceiling. They defused it before taking tours down, obviously. This time when we went they had removed that section to make an additional emergency exit. Of all the places to remove! But it's still worth seeing. You can see the huge craters left from the mine warfare of 1915-1916, but it's really the free guided tours of the tunnels and preserved trenches that make Vimy so special.

Beaumont-Hamel

Despite this being my 3rd visit to the Battlefields, a certain amount of time is required to recover and process the experience. I don't believe in ghosts but I do believe that events and actions can affect the spirit and atmosphere of a place. Beaumont-Hamel, the memorial to the Newfoundland division, is such a place. It's one of my favorite memorials of the Western Front, because (though small) it's beautiful, and erected out of love and a spirit of shared community sacrifice. The Dominion of Newfoundland and Labrador (Newfoundland didn't join Canada until 1949) was TINY. And yet in 1914, proud and stubborn Newfoundland declared that they would raise their own battalion rather than be part of the Canadian Army. Despite having a population of less than 3,000 people, they  were able to send over 600 men to the Western Front. On the first day of the Somme, they were ordered to go over the top around 9am, and more than half of them were killed. It was the end of the Newfoundland battalion, on their first day of combat.

Of course this was disastrous for Newfoundland. That was a huge percentage of the population, and an even larger percentage of the young, male population. The women of Newfoundland raised money to buy a part of the battlefield, to be left as a park. You can still follow the trench lines and see shell cratersss, and the great caribou stands over the park, baying defiantly towards the German lines. Dominating what were the German trench lines, a huge Highlander stands with his legs braced, overlooking what used to be a ridge and is now a valley-- one of the great mines that was blown on the first day of the Somme.

My brother really liked the Highlander; he stands as though on guard. It was raining the day we spent at Beaumont-Hamel, and our pants and shoes were soaked by the time we got back to the car. There are two small Newfie cemeteries at the bottom of the park, and behind the Highlander are 12 graves of men of the Black Watch. The flowers planted in the cemetery are from Canada, and the park is covered in maple trees that were planted as part of the memorial.

Large portions of the park are roped of with electric fences; just like the rest of the Western Front there are still large quantities of unexploded ordinance, so make sure you keep to the paths! We were especially prompted to pray at Beaumont-Hamel; there is a sense of peace and melancholy that is irresistible.

We made a circuit of the park, even in the rain. When it rains on the battlefields, although it's uncomfortable, it seems normal-- and at least no one was shooting at us, and we could go home and get dry!