Vimy Ridge
In Flanders fields the poppies blowWhen I was a child it was my habit, when I walked past a plaque memorializing the two World Wars with this poem of John McRae's, to stop briefly where it stood beyond a wrought-iron fence in front of Harbord Collegiate Institute, and refresh my memory, making certain I had all the words right. As a Jewish child, knowing what I did of the war that ended when I was 9 years old and how horribly it impacted on the Jewish people, the poem had an especial resonance with me. I wanted to remember it, always, so I would forget, never. The sad resignation and determination I took from the poem resonated with me, recalling all the horrors that a child knew could be visited upon human beings.
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
When I was that child my father assured me that when I reached the age he was then there would be no more wars, that the world, in silent and horrified witness to what had occurred in the two wars just past, and more memorably, he thought, through the Holocaust, would never, ever permit such dread carnage to come to pass again. And how wrong he was. While those words of my father comforted me and uplifted me in hopes for the future, I now know at an age much in advance of his at that time, that human beings simply are not designed to avert such catastrophes. There is something deeply dark within us that consigns us to repeat and repeat that which becomes truly our hell on earth.
Still, we memorialize and glorify that which horrifies us. There is nothing ennobling about war, but we can take refuge in the thought that there are times when the gallant decision to take to the battlefield is justified when to do otherwise is to remain complicit when dark forces threaten the existence of innocent people. We say we will never permit such wholesale slaughter of human beings to occur, ever again. Even while we bear witness time and again to the occurrence of human slaughter on a scale to defy the very existence of humanity and our purpose on this earth. Africa now is deep in the depths of human depravity where tribal, political, social and religious wars are waged on a genocidal level and we despair and do naught.
But we do remember. We remember, as Canadians, sending our undaunted youth into the adventures of their lives. And that so many did not return. These were mere children venturing into adulthood for the most part, and they did their best to live up to the expectations of those left behind, as well as their own expectations of themselves put to the test. Valour did not challenge them nor did the fear they must have felt hurtling themselves directly into the kind of danger that for so many spelled an end to life. Their mothers and fathers, wives and children, brothers and sisters would forever after mourn their passing.
Canada remembers its soldiers at the re-unveiling of the Vimy Ridge Memorial in France. During the Great War Canada sent nearly one hundred thousand of its men, many barely out of their teen years to face the enemy. "We stood there in mud to our waists all night waiting for the eventful hour. After fifteen minutes before the time set, I took two water bottles of rum and gave each of the men a good swallow, for I was bitter cold standing in the mud all night" according to Lieut. Kirkland from Dutton, Ontario. "When the time finally arrived, it fell to the gunners like Private Ives, manning their massive howitzers and field guns, to rally their fellow artillerymen to begin the crescendo of explosives and steel."
The Germans had captured the ridge during their initial drive into France at the start of the war and since then, they had spent three years improving its formidable natural defences. Three separate networks of trenches criss-crossed the field, each of them up to 500 metres deep with concrete machine-gun posts and bastions interconnected by a labyrinth of deep trenches and tunnels. Each line was protected by belts of barbed wire more than 100 metres wide and included deep shelters large enough to hold hundreds of German soldiers. This then was what the Canadians were facing, a well-established enemy post which had already tossed back onslaughts by the French and the British forces.
Moreover, when Captain Walter Moorhouse, serving with the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles, toured the old French lines as the Canadians took over the sector in late 1916 he was shocked to find the trenches full of decomposing bodies from a battle which had taken place a year and a half earlier. "They had never been cleared and were still well [reinforced] and in fair condition", he remarked "but with many corpses lying around." The Canadian plan of attack on Vimy Ridge involved a combination of firepower - 1,097 howitzers, mortars and field guns assembled - an assault tactic called "the creeping barrage" where artillery fires about 100 metres ahead of advancing soldiers, gradually raising aim as infantry moves forward, one trench at a time.
The soldiers wrote letters home when they could and sometimes these were the last and only effects their families had to remember them by:
- Dear Mother - Well I guess it is about time I wrote you a few lines to let you know I am still alive and kicking. We are out of the trenches, training to go over the top, but we'll be doing the real thing in a couple of days... William Henry Bell, April 7, 1917.
- Dear Mary and Kiddies - It is a wet night so will try to write a line. We came out last evening and the moon was shining good for once and Fritz did not hit anyone coming out. There were more hits going in...I was out in No Man's Land on the edge of an old crater some place about a lake of water in it...The big thing is next time. I hope I can write to you when it is over, will write if I can soon as it is allowed. Well pray for the best. Will write a little to the children. Your old man, Roy. William Roy Gullen, April 7, 1917.
- Dear Sister - I received your letter and thought I would answer it. So here goes. It's raining here as usual and the cannons are roaring on all sides. It stops raining here whenever the guns stop firing, so you can imagine how much good weather there is. You people all seem to think I am sorry I enlisted, well I hate to say I am not but I ain't 'cause I would never of been contented at home if I hadn't. William Henry Bell, April 3, 1917.
- Dear Lillian - You will probably have heard by the time this reaches you that I got what I came to France for. It's only a little wound in the foot and not serious, but enough for a good rest before I go back. I shall write a long letter soon and also one to Dad, when I get settled. Clarence Reginald Gass, April 15, 1917.
- My Dear Sister Olga - I am sitting on my bed writing this epistle looking out of the tent door. There are eight others sleeping besides me in this tent, with straw on the floor to keep the mud from oozing through into our blankets. Well, we are situated on a side hill, halfway up. There are plenty of trees growing to shield us from enemy aeroplanes' sight...Across the ravine is the battle-scarred country and a cavalry camp. Letter from Jack Malcolm Brown, April 8, 1917.
But there is no glory in war. There can be a morally legitimate reason to respond, to answer the call to defend that which is held dear in a moral, enlightened, egalitarian society. And we human beings, beyond our dreadful faults do embody some uplifting traits, such as hope. Hope induces us to look to a better, a fairer, a brighter future. Despite ourselves.
Labels: Realities
posted by Pieface @ Monday, April 09, 2007
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