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Flanders
And so we come to Flanders where Canada's sons, on the fields of
horrific battles in that Great War of 1914 -1918 made illustrious their
name on the pages of military history. Here it was, in this tortured and
ravaged bosom of Belgium that the Angel of Death swept down in all her
ghastliness, and the hot and poisonous winds stirred by the brush of her
wings seared the land, and on its passing left behind hideous death and
desolation far beyond imagination, and a sadness infinitely beyond what
we accept as sadness. It was somewhere on these fields that a young Canadian
Medical Officer, John McRae patched up battalions of wounded, and in the
moments of lull found time to write the immortal and poignant lines of
"IN FLANDERS FIELDS".
Our approach to Ypres, the queen of the Flemish Plain was from the
east along the Menin Road. As we came to Gheluvelt we were well into what
came to be known in that slaughterhouse of unprecedented proportions as
the Ypres Salient. It was a place known, I'm sure, to even the most casual
reader of Canadian military history. We stopped at Hooge crater War Cemetery
where 105 Canadians lie buried, sharing the rich, grass-carpeted soil
with rows upon rows of British War Dead. Silver birch gives shade to the
entrance, and the whole is enclosed by a privet hedge, with ash and spruce
trees spaced in regular order along the perimeter. Far across the miles
of open fields we can see the trees of Sanctuary Wood where once storms
of cannon-fire raged almost
unabated. After weeks of such punishment there was little left of the
wood but a hint in the acres of torn trunks completely shed of bark and
denuded of all but a stub or two of what had once been branches, sticking
out of the churned-up landscape like so many oversized fence-posts. The
woods, like every other woods and farmland throughout this whole region,
made up just one panel of the vast, surrealistic canvas of West Flanders
hell.
As we drive slowly along the road towards Ypres we pass through
what had come to be known as "Hellfire Corner", probably the
most famous intersection, or perhaps I should say ‘infamous' crossroads
of that population consuming war. When the Ypres Salient flamed and echoed
daily to the thunderous shellfire, as though from a never-ending summer
storm, and almost every square foot of ground had been gouged and pounded
into craters, some almost of unimaginable immensity, it was this particular
intersection that took the heaviest tonnage of shells. Not a single wall
of a dwelling or outbuilding remained standing, with little to suggest
to soldiers on their way up to the trenches or on their way back to a
rest area that people had once made their homes here. But today 64 years
later there's scarcely a sign anywhere to indicate the unutterable horror
that had befallen this peaceful farming country. The unrelenting thunder
of the guns that had sounded for four agonizing years has long since been
stilled, and now it's so peaceful you’d never believe that a war
of such magnitude had visited this road junction. It's quiet now, quiet
by contrast except for the steady buzz of cars and the roar of big diesel
16 wheelers speeding by.
A short distance down the road we come into view of that impressive
War Memorial, The Menin Gate, built by the British to honour the memory
of 56,000 British and Dominion soldiers who were killed in the Salient
and have no known grave. Their names are inscribed on huge panels within
the arch of the Gate and on the walls all around the massive structure.
We spent at least a half an hour reading the names thereon, young men
who in the prime of life passed from the sight of their comrades in the
performance of their duty, and became no more. The enormity of what had
taken place in the quagmires of the Salient, overwhelmed us as we looked
up at the panels and on the walls and
saw all the names carved thereon. It's impossible not to feel the tragedy
brought upon humanity. You read about the enormous casualties in books
but are not so moved, but when you read some of the names of the 56,000
inscribed on the walls you can't help but be deeply moved.
Every evening at sunset two buglers (at times,up to four) from the Belgian
Fire Brigade take station beneath the great arch of the Menin
Gate to sound the Last Post. Alex and I arrived in time to see and hear
this exceptionally moving ceremony of remembrance. I brought along a portable
cassette recorder so that I could capture the sad notes of their salute
to the lost Dead, but would you know it, it was just like me to forget
to check the batteries to make sure they were still good. To my utter
dismay and frustration they were deader than the proverbial doornail.
As the buglers stood in the road beneath the soaring vault of the
Gate and placed their silver bugles (actually trumpets) to their lips
and the first long, quavering notes echoed off the walls, the emotions
that swept over me back in 1975 when the single bugler sounded the Last
Post in the Cassino War Cemetery came rushing back. And when the echo
of the last mournful notes died away on the cool but comfortable evening
air, and the trumpets came down slowly from the buglers' lips Alex and
I looked at each other in understanding, paused, and then turned and walked
back to the pub, or estaminet on the nearby corner. I think it must have
been at least five minutes before either of us spoke. It was a time for
introspection only.We found a room at the Hotel Britannique overlooking
the famous square that had been witness to and felt the thunderous tumult
of four extremely bitter and thunderous years of war. It was Friday night
and if we hadn't been so 'whacked out' we would have gone out to some
pub nearby, or strolled through the town, but instead we decided to retire
earlier than usual. The lousy night we spent in the rat's nest in Dunkirk
had caught up on us and all we wanted to do was hit the hay. I dropped
off to sleep within seconds after my head touched the pillow and slept
so soundly, not even the guns of the
Ypres salient would have awakened me.
The morning found us totally refreshed and ready and eager to do some
battlefield visiting. While Alex shaved in preparation for going down
to breakfast I sat on the wide window-sill looking out onto the square
dominated by the massive hulk of the famous Cloth Hall. This huge dark-stoned
building had been the aiming-point for German heavy artillery and so took
many direct hits, and was eventually set on fire. The gutted ruins was
captured in detail on canvas by one of the artists of the day, a painting
I well remember. So, when I looked out towards the south end of the square
and saw the immense building of blackened stone blocks I saw the painting
all over again. I visualized those nights of hell in the Salient when
the square resounded to the constant boom of big guns and the overwhelming
eardrum shattering crash of incoming shells. And in the brief moments
of Iull it echoed to another sound in the wild pounding of hooves of artillery
gun-team horses rushing desperately to or away from the front. I’d
read books upon books on the Great War, about the fighting that ravaged
this corner of Belgium, and now as I sit on the window-sill overlooking
the square where it all took place I can hardly believe that such chaos
had once reigned here. How different and peaceful it is today. It was
Saturday morning, and as with every farmers’ market at home and throughout
Europe, the farmers and craftsmen are busy setting up and stocking their
stalls for the day's business soon to begin. Immediately after our skimpy
continental breakfast, we took to the road in our trusty Peugeot and began
what turned out to be a ’much too quick’ tour of the battlefields
hereabouts. It was too bad because there were so many of them we would
like to have seen. A student of the military history of World War I or
anyone else who, like myself enjoys reading everything about the Great
War knows that the area around Ypres, and in fact the whole of the Flanders
Plain is replete with battle sites. I was disappointed we didn't have
the time to stay longer—at least for a few days, but the itinerary
we had agreed on, limited us in this respect so as to allow us more time
to cover the Normandy battle area, the one Alex was so intimately involved
in.
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Flanders
Sanctuary Wood
Vimy Ridge
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Sanctuary Wood
Our first stop was at Sanctuary Wood, a name that would at once
suggest it was a haven of serenity and contemplative thought, a place
where the only sound would come from the soughing of the wind in the leaves
of the alders, and the cheerful chirping of the birds in their upper branches.
In stark reality, however, when the fighting raged daily all around and
through it, the wood became literally a charnel house, a wasteland of
frightful and staggering pro-portions. What had once been a thick and
flowering wood gracing the otherwise empty landscape before the fighting
closed in, was soon a blasted acreage of torn and denuded trees, and of
craters beyond count in which mud-encrusted men wallowed day after dreary
day, night after hellish night in hideous and unspeak-able filth. Lashed
by torrential rains that fell all too frequently, the battlefield quickly
became an almost impassable
quagmire, a porridge of mud in which often the wounded sank out of sight
and died a horrific death in its smothering depths. Here, under the constant
threat of instant death, and in a degradation beyond imagination they
eked out an existence of sorts, where only the lowest of living creatures
(rats and lice) shared or competed with them in this abominable hell.
No other sector on the Western Front could quite match the horror of Passchendaele.
It's conceivable that there had to be moments when the condemn-ed souls
wondered if they and the shredded woods and the moonscape fields all around
them would
ever emerge whole again from this black pit of war. In their helplessness
one could scarcely blame them for giving up all hope of ever seeing their
families again, of ever basking in the bright sunshine of peace and quiet,
and to know what it was like once more to be not afraid. For far too many
who came here to Ypres, their misery, their hopes and their fears eventually
came to an end, their remains now resting beneath the sod of 15 cemeteries
in and around this, one of the most famous battlefields of the Ist War.
Wars do not last for all time, however, and the killing and the maiming
and the destruction and the suffering inevitably came to an end at the
11th hour, of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. And as with all
wars, the 1914/1918 war that was to have ended all wars left behind a
vast graveyard stretching from Le Havre on the Bay of the Seine, dotting
the landscape all the way across the Pas de Calais, through the Somme
to Ypres in Belgium, and down into the Champagne region northeast of Paris.
The war, as all wars do, left also in its wake, years of aching sadness
in the hearts of those millions of families, both enemy and our side alike
whose loved ones lie buried in the fertile soil of Belgium and France.
Winter came soon after the guns fell silent, followed by spring and the
renewal of life in Nature. Time, the eternal healer walked hand in hand
with Nature and the weather, and as the years passed by one by one, Sanctuary
Wood in this tortured corner of Belgium slowly returned to something of
what it had once been. The uncoun table craters and the miles upon miles
of zig-zag trenches gradually disappeared, filled in by wind-driven soil,
the rain, and the tireless determination and spirit of the Belgian people
who laboured mightily to return their fields to productivity. Soon, the
crops flourished as they had flourished before the war. But now the nutrients
they took up came from the flesh and the bones and the blood of the millions
of bodies of young men,
both friend and foe who had perished here.
Blow golden trumpets, mournfully
For all the golden youth that's fled,
For all the shattered dreams that lie
Where God has laid the quiet dead
Under an alien sky.
Mildred Huxley
SATURDAY, JUNE 2,1979—We arrived at Sanctuary Wood at the end of
a narrow, gravelled roadway. Here an enterprising Belgian citizen had
set up a modest business in the form of a diner which catered to the many
veterans and other visitors who arrive every year to visit what was once
the Ypres Salient. Alongside the diner, the proprietor or his predecessors
had preserved to some small degree a portion of the trenches that ran
through the woods. We had no way of knowing, however, whether the trenches
had been occupied by Canadians
or the enemy. The trench here certainly didn't look anything like the
trenches I'd seen in so many photographs of the battlefields. No doubt
it was because six decades of wind and rain had worn the trench down to
the extent that now it didn't look to be anything more than a shallow
drainage ditch. There were no parapets or firing steps, no dugouts, no
barbed wire, only a gently con-toured gash on the edge of a large tract
of farmland. Scattered about around this trench lay the equipment and
detritus of battle, a split-open and heavily rusted British helmet, a
small stack of Stokes 2" mortar bombs partially hidden amongst a
clump of weeds. A few feet away, pointing skywards was the black oxidized
mortar that once sent the bombs like these on their high-trajectory flight
to the target. Just off the pathway a Lee-Enfield rifle rested where it
had been dropped by its bearer, its wooden butt all but crumbled to nothingness.
Had the man who dropped it been wounded or perhaps been killed? All through
this segment of woodland lay scattered
various rusted flotsam of the death-struggles that took place here, including
a proliferation of rusted shrapnel. But what surprised me was the big
ball-type naval mine sitting a few feet off the path. The presence of
this mine so far from the sea told me that this artifact of sea warfare
was likely brought here and set down in a crude attempt to duplicate what
might have been the scene hereabout. It didn't fool either Alex or me
because we damn well knew it was unlikely that Sanctuary Wood would be
the place for one of these ship-busters to be used. But what really took
me aback was the sight of a large table full of human bones. No skulls,
however, were on display. Even so, neither Alex or I thought too much
of the museum curator's idea of displaying the skeletal remains of those
who gave their lives here. They deserved better treatment than that.
On the 2nd of June 1916, on Mount Sorrel close by Sanctuary Wood, the
infantry battalions of 3rd Canadian Division got their first sour taste
of what trench fighting on the Western Front was all about. A devastating
bombardment of their trenches preceded an attack of wave upon wave of
grey-green clad, coal-scuttle helmeted German infantry. The artillery
fire was so severe that whole sections of the forward trench system and
the communication trenches were obliterated along with the poor blokes
who occupied them. Not until this moment had British and Canadian troops
experienced such an inferno of man-made destruction, a mind and soul-numbing
event that none who survived it would ever forget. Although in the initial
stages of the attack the assaulting enemy waves enjoyed limited success
in pinching out this irritating projection into their lines, their offensive
was contained. Two weeks later our own troops launched counterattacks,
throwing the Germans back and inflicting heavy casualties. But as is usually
the case in any attack, the men who are doing the attacking suffer casualties
greater than that of the defenders. Two Canadian Divisions finally took
Mount Sorrel, but at what heartbreaking cost! They suffered 9600 casualties.Today,
a Memorial on Hill 62 marks the area where the bloodletting had taken
place. The approach to the Memorial is three-tiered, with wide stone
steps on either side of the 50 feet wide terraces planted solidly with
roses. At the top, in the centre of a large circle of finely manicured
lawn stands a block of white Quebec granite. Carved on the face of this
Memorial appear these words:
HERE
AT MOUNT SORREL AND ON THE LINE FROM
HUGE TO ST.ELI THE CANADIAN CORPS FOUGHT
IN THE DEFENCE OF PYRES APRIL -- AUGUST 1916.
Our next stop was at Passchendaele, known by all who had fought here
as the sinkhole of Belgium. Whatever the name each may have had for this
slough of unbelievable horrors, it would be an apt description. This scape
of mud, mud, mud, a vast sea of mud swallowed a generation of youth. Death
was one thing, but here death was of an unutterable dimension in which
the wounded sank out of sight and died in the suffocating mud or drowned
in the brown, stinking water that filled the craters. Only those who died
instantly from shrapnel or bullet or were blown away into 'kingdom come'
were spared the unthinkable. Far too many others simply disappeared in
what can only be described as a gumbo of mud, their remains never to be
found. No crosses mark
their graves. Their names instead, are cut into the stone of the great
arch
of the Menin Gate— 54,896, whose graves are known only to God. For
those who survived the daily ordeal of concentrated terror and misery
in this abattoir where men were slaughtered by the thousands at a time
and hundred thousands as the weeks wore on into months, there could have
been no greater punishment than to have to endure all the evils Passchendaele
and the whole of the Ypres Salient offered.
As I had mentioned a few pages back, our itinerary didn’t allow
us to
cover all the famous battle sites in and around Ypres that we dearly would
like to have visited. Nor did we have the time to stop in at the many
War Cemeteries that dot the countryside all through the Flanders Plain.
We visited only a few. There was, however, a World War I site, a significant
piece of ground that stands uppermost in most Canadians' minds, and we
were determined not to miss it, and that was Vimy Ridge. The Ridge, isn’t
in Belgium, as many seem to think, but in France. So, the following morning,
with every sign that we were going to enjoy a lovely day for a change,
we took to the road in an upbeat mood on our carefree way south to the
Douai Plain.
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Flanders
Sanctuary Wood
Vimy Ridge
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Vimy Ridge
From Ypres to Vimy Ridge the countryside had little to offer in the way
of natural beauty. Uninspiring, to say the least. Of all the many miles
we eventually covered in our travels through France, Belgium, and Holland
these 40 miles, give or take a few, had to be the least interesting, about
as "ho hum" as any stretch of 401 between Windsor and Chatham.
But we survived the ennui and before long were zipping along at fair speed
through the Douai Plain in a bee-line for Vimy Ridge.
Our first stop was at a hamlet called La Chaudiere, a little more than
a mile away from the base of the ridge. From the War Cemetery by the roadside
we had our first view of the famous Memorial of Vimy Ridge that most Canadians
of our era cannot fail but to recognize for its twin, soaring pylons.
It's Canada's ultimate Memorial to her World War I Dead. Even though the
view wasn’t a clear one due to haze, I felt my pulse quicken at the
thought that I would very soon be looking at it from close up, something
I thought in a million years would never happen.
Before we set out for the Ridge and the Memorial we walked along the
rows of headstones in the La Chaudiere Military Cemetery where 906 soldiers
lie buried, 638 of them Canadians. One of those who lie here is Private
John George Pattison of the 50th Battalion who won the Victoria Cross
on April 10,1917 in the great battle for Vimy Ridge. After taking our
usual number of pictures we continued on our way to visit that famous
Memorial. Instead of driving straight ahead through Petit Vimy and thence
to Neuville St.Vaast behind the Ridge which was the more direct route
we chose to turn right and follow the Ridge to the village of Givenchy
en Gohelle on the extreme left as it overlooks the Douai Plain. As we
tool along the road running parallel to the Ridge about a half mile from
its base we can see off to our right the great slag-heaps of Loos rising
out of the billiard-table flat countryside. I thought to myself, "I
wonder if they're the same slag-heaps that were there during that war."
At Givenchy en Gohelle we turned left and within a few hundred feet
turned left again, following a narrow pot-holed asphalt road that looked
to be rarely used because of the weeds growing in its many cracks and
crevices. The road was no wider than a one-car garage driveway. We made
the wrong turn, as we soon learned, much to our dismay. I knew something
was amiss right off when I noticed how narrow and in disrepair it was.
"There's got to be a better way than this, Alex," I remarked
as we bumped along over pot-hole after pot-hole. And then we passed a
sign on the right indicating a Canadian Military Cemetery which wasn’t
visible from the road. We'd gone about 150 feet past when Alex decided
we should stop and visit the place. We backed up
and then Alex nosed the Peugeot into the laneway. And that's all that
it was, nothing but a laneway. I didn't like the looks of what we were
getting into. A sign posted at the entrance confirmed my fears that this
wasn't a smart thing to do. The sign warned visitors that the lane was
impassable to autos. At first glance though, it didn't appear to be all
that bad except that it was a bit narrow. And since the Peugeot wasn't
a big car anyway, Alex went ahead in a bravado born of something, but
I didn't quite know what that something was. "Hell, its a bit narrow,
that's all. . .we'll make it okay," Alex exclaimed, trying to put
my mind at ease. And away we went.
Only five seconds elapsed, not much more, when came the horrible
realization that we’d made a serious error in judgment. The ruts
got deeper the farther we went into the woods. Around the second curve
they became min-iature canyons filled with water. "Oh, God no!"
I groaned, though in silence. "I think we'd better back up, Alex,"
I meekly uttered suggestion. But backing up was easier said than done.
Alex, however, not to be denied the challenge, set his jaw with grim determination
and slammed the stick-shift into 2nd gear, tramped hard on the gas and
the sturdy little Peugeot fairly jumped in response.
Never in all my born days had I known such a wild, gut-wrenching ride
as I had on that sunny but hazy afternoon on Vimy Ridge. I dropped my
map from trembling fingers, grabbed firm hold of the seat frame and held
on for dear life. Man, was I ever scared! The last time I was as paralyzed
with fright was in the winter of 1944 in the north of Italy at a minor
water-barrier named the Fosso Munio when I was sure my luck had all run
out. The Peugeot bounced and caromed one way and then the other through
the ever-deepening slime, shuddering as the wheels spun in the deeper
and softer spots, and splashed through the string of little lakes encountered
all along the way. With every sickening thud I expected every nut, bolt
and weld in this product of French automotive engineering to fly apart.
But Alex held on to the steering wheel (Thank God!). In fact he had it
right up against his chest, his face practically up against the windshield
straining to see through the thickening opacity of brown mud thrown up
by the churning wheels. It was the 'Death ride of the Valkyries’
no less. With the engine racing and the high-pitched whine of the wheels
spinning through the custard mud, it was a crescendo of noise as we plunged
on to what I was certain would be our doom.
Either we'd sink out of sight or be dashed to hideous death against the
trees bordering the laneway. Between moments of sheer terror and rising
panic I somehow was able to maintain lucid thought clearly enough to see
our names in the local paper listed as "missing in action on Vimy
Ridge", the very last two Canadians to be so listed.
Everything pointed to imminent disaster. If we were lucky enough not
to disappear into the quagmire I could see us ending up smashing ourselves
against one of the sturdy trees somewhere along the way. Hope for
survival at that moment appeared to be pretty slim. If, somehow, we didn’t
get hurt or killed, then there was a better than even chance we’d
be mired for the night. Not quite as bad, but it was better than the alternative.
What I hadn't figured on was my good friend’s superior driving ability.
I unfairly underestimated it. In one last burst of horsepower and churning
wheels we surged through the last fifty yard stretch of treacherous morass,
and suddenly we were through and on dry land. "Wow! What a ride!
Breathing resumed to near normal. We finally reached the tiny cemetery,
but there were more than a few moments back there when visions flashed
before my eyes—visions of our ending up in side-by-side graves, buried
beside the heroes on Vimy Ridge. We got out of our mud-drenched car to
survey what we had just ploughed our way through, examined the thick layer
of mud covering
almost every square inch of what had not long before been a glossy white
car, shook our heads, and then broke the tension with hearty laughs.
We spent a half hour or so here at the edge of La Folie Wood walking
along the rows of weathered white headstones marking the graves of 144
Canadians, 43 of them known only to God. Most of the young men buried
here had given their lives in the assault on Hill 145 close by the wood.
And now what do we do? After our short visit to what is known by the
unimaginative name of No. 2 Cemetery we wondered how we were going to
get back to a passable road, wherever that road might happen to be. We
sure as shootin' weren't going to try getting out the way we had come.
A guy would have to be out of his mind to go through that obstacle-course
of a forest track. There simply had to be another more accessible route
to the cemetery, we conjectured. We didn't have to look far. As a matter
of fact. only fifty yards away we came out onto a two-lane concrete road
running from Souchez at the northwestern extremity of the Ridge, down
to Arras about 7 miles away. If
we’d not made that turn at Givenchy, but continued straight ahead
for less than a quarter mile we’d have run right into this road.
Anyway, what a relief!
As we barrelled along the highway in our nose to tail mud-covered
car we had to have attracted more than just a little attention from other
motorists and people walking by. But since our windows were so thickly
smeared with drying mud, the Vimy Ridge variety, we couldn't be sure of
anything, not even in the direction we were travelling. We weren't too
concerned, however, over what the people might be thinking about us as
we shot by. All we were worried about was making another wrong turn and
go shooting off on a route we hadn't planned on travelling, a route that
would take us away from the memorial. As it so happened, Alex did a most
commendable job of navigation without any help or backseat driving from
me. Five minutes later we rolled to a stop practically in the shadow of
the great Memorial.
As the booklet published by the Department of Veterans Affairs, titled
"We Will Remember" states it: the Memorial on Vimy Ridge does
more
than mark the site of the engagement which Canadians were to remember
with more pride than any other operation of the First World War. It stands
as a tribute to all who served their country in battle in that four-year
struggle, and particularly to those who gave their lives. At the base
of the Memorial there appears, both in French and English, these words:
TO THE VALOUR OF THEIR COUNTRYMEN
IN THE
GREAT WAR AND IN MEMORY OF THEIR SIXTY
THOUSAND DEAD THIS MONUMENT IS RAISED BY
THE PEOPLE OF CANADA.
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