The Somme and Vimy

The Somme is in France, some distance south of Ypres. There is a brooding quality to the Somme, even today. The track below leads north, the British and Empire lines to the left, Germans to the right. On July 1, 1916, 20,000 British and Empire soldiers died as they went over the top. Some officers kicked footballs (soccer balls) into no man's land for their men to follow. They were mown down in waves.

Here are the lines of the Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel on the Somme. The Germans were down the slope to the left.

In the next picture, you can see a red sign in the distance, roughly where the German front line lay.

On July 1, facing a torrent of fire, the Newfoundlanders advanced 'with chins tucked down as if walking into a blizzard.' By the end of the day, 310 were dead. According to the Veterans Affairs Canada website, 'Of the 780 men who went forward only about 110 survived unscathed, of whom only sixty eight were available for roll call the following day.'

Major David Craig, recently of the Royal Welch Fusiliers (yes, it is Welch!) and our excellent guide, gestures from one of the Newfoundland trenches.

Even now, parts of the Western Front are unsafe. Farmers regularly find shells, bones and equipment, and munitions disposal experts have been killed in the not-too-distant past.

For safety’s sake, sheep are still used to crop the grass in areas not ploughed by farmers. The sheep, by the way, are in a trench.

Y Ravine cemetery was the approximate location of a German machine gun that caused heavy Newfoundland casualties. As are all the British and Commonwealth war cemeteries, it is truly lovely, almost an English garden, as was the intention of the War Graves Commission in the wake of the conflict.

Vimy Ridge is to Canada as Gallipoli is to the Australians and New Zealanders. The taking, by Canadians fighting as a combined Canadian Corps, of one of the most formidable German strong points on the Western Front is major step towards our national sense of self.

The Ridge, to the north of the Somme, was German high ground dominating British and Canadian positions. On Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, as the snow came down, four Canadian divisions took what the French and British couldn’t. But, for two German positions taken later, it was done in a morning and afternoon. Four Canadian Victoria Crosses were won.

Below, from a Canadian sniper’s position, is the German front line, the little ridge just below the wire.

The next picture shows a German communication trench leading up to their front line. The Canadian flag is just behind the Canadian front line.

The Vimy Ridge National Historic Site is on Canadian soil given by France. Those who know say that Vimy and Beaumont-Hamel are among the best surviving examples of Great War battlefields. Perhaps only land near Verdun, still sealed off, is so pitted with shell holes and mine craters. The ground at Vimy will bear witness for centuries.

In the tunnels, which led to the Canadian front line, there are rooms with the remnants of furnishings and equipment.

I am not a great monument person, but the Canadian monument at Vimy (at the crest of Hill 145, which was taken on the third day) is unquestionably one of the most beautiful I have ever visited. It can be seen from miles, is inspiring and, reflecting our national character, unmilitaristic. On a sunny day, newly restored, it was stunning. I often avoid figures in my pictures, but felt that, in this case, they added perspective.

One of the central figures is of 'Canada mourning her dead'. The picture below looks northeast. Victorious Canadian soldiers on the ridge could see the Germans retreating below. In the distance, you can see the slag heaps, approximately where my uncle was gassed many months later.

The next picture shows the fields at the appropriately named Passchedaele, sometimes translated as ‘Vale of the Passion’. Canadians, called in as ‘storm troops’, took it in November, 1917, part of the Third Battle of Ypres. Men drowned in the mud. Casualties were so heavy that historians sometimes refer to it as a Canadian Calvary. My uncle was here.

Two people on the tour wanted to see family graves. Here, Jane Blackstock from Barrie visits an uncle, Captain A.C. Parsons of the Somerset Light Infantry, killed in 1918. With another tour participant, we also visited the grave of a soldier in the same battalion as my uncle, although killed before my uncle arrived.

Fittingly, we also visited a German cemetery. They are less garden-like than the British and Commonwealth cemeteries and the graves lie in shade. It is said that, unlike the Second War, Allied and German soldiers, sharing the prolonged misery of the Western Front, felt some degree of camaraderie. I was pleased to see that British schoolchildren had left Remembrance crosses.

The defeated Germans were allotted much less land for their cemeteries, so the soldiers are often in mass graves. I decided to place a Canadian poppy at one.

I returned to Canada with one memento (I refuse to call it a souvenir). The eagle-eyed Major Craig found it at Vimy. I hold it and wonder. It is a piece of shrapnel, quite heavy for its size, one of millions in the fields of Belgium and France. What was its effect? Did it hit someone as the Canadians advanced? It is a small, terribly lethal part of my country's history.