A New Lens

I know I said I was going to write about the screaming trench at Beaumont-Hamel but I have decided to move that to another day.

I want to share some of my “ah ha” moments which most likely will be “no brainers” to military historical buffs but for me have become moments of clarity which have shifted my whole perspective on all of my WWI interest. 

My passion for the conflict and the Canadian involvement in this has been focused on something beyond the loss and the grief and the pain and I have Norm Christie and Scott D. to thank for that.  Their perspectives and searches for the names of the missing and nameless soldiers have re-framed my experience of this time period and those who lost their lives in the horrific conflicts..

Let me explain:  Norm has made a career about increasing the visibility of the sacred places, not only here in France and Belgium, but around the world for the major 20^th century conflicts in which Canadians have found themselves.  He has made it his mission to put a name on every nameless grave marker, a face to the name, and a soul to the stone.  He works tirelessly to make sure the world understands the details of the battles, yes, but more importantly, he impresses upon us that we must find and tell the stories of the men behind the markers.  We must tell their stories over and over and over to give them the immortality they deserve.

We must be servants to life not messengers of death.

Scott, a fellow traveler who had done this same tour six times, has learned well from Norm and also collects metals, postcards, letters, and pictures and also searches for the men behind the effects.  He has even placed a name to an unidentified airman (to name just one) of the Great War.  Now this once anonymous man has his name back and will not be forgotten.

That is really what all of this is about for Norm and others, like Scott, who have learned well from Norm:  tell their stories AND HAVE CLARITY OF PURPOSE FOR DOING SO!  Just collecting metals and such to have or viewing the memorials to go there is not enough to free the lost from their purgatory of anonymity. 

Every time I thought about doing a tour to these sacred places, I really believed I would be crippled with grief and weighed down the whole time by the pain and anguish of the place.  I believed that the ghosts would constantly scream, and I would have little or no way of drowning them out in my head.  I honestly thought I would be depressed for the entire trip.

Thanks to a few incremental, but profoundly important little “light bulb” moments, despair changed to hope.  Not only that, the story of the battles has come to life because Norm taught me how to listen to the stories as told by the cemeteries.  The gravestones tell us who was there, when the devastation took place, and which groups worked with (or against) each other.  Through the examination of the grave stones, you can tell if tanks were there, airplanes, infantry, cavalry, and so on.  

For me, the most freeing lesson has been two fold: 

       1)    Contrary to my assumption, not all memorial sites are stained with grief.  Some sites are still grief-filled for sure but some are horrified, angry, and even resigned.  Some sites are peaceful and free.  I would never have anticipated this, but some sites have released its sadness and have moved on to peace and maybe even pride.

I have visited some exquisitely beautiful cemeteries (out in the middle of nowhere) which are utterly peaceful.  Those souls are perfectly ok with where they are.

Hedge Row Cemetery

(2)     After a very philosophical discussion with Scott – after a lesson-filled day with Norm – I realise that should I choose to locate the names and information of the people whose post cards and pictures I have, they will not be nameless either.  When one hunts down the names of the men who earned the medals, or when one discovers the name of the “Soldier of the Great War,” life is breathed back into them.  As I have said before, the process becomes more about remembrance and honouring the dead and less about mourning them.

(3)     I was helping Norm locate a couple of stones and, while he was off photographing the one stone, I located the other.  The inscription on the stone, as placed there by the family was as follows:  A. A. Briggs  2^nd BN. Canadian Inf.  26^th April 1916, Age 23

                                                            All we had.

                                                            Loved and Deeply Missed

                                                

                                                             By Father and Mother

            

              Both the inscription and the age of the soldier when he died hit me hard.  My oldest son, Dylan is 23 years old.  And “All we had,” is eviscerating.  How many mothers and fathers lost all they had?

When Norm came over to take the picture and read the inscription, he also commented on how moving it was and shared the inscription which always moves him:  O for the touch of the vanished hand or the sound of the voice that is still,  as found on F.J Jones’s grave.  I agreed with him that this inscription is moving and added that what got me was that Briggs was the same age as my oldest son.

  

Norm’s reply:  “Oh…you can’t go there.”

He eloquently described how this whole process of naming the unknown soldiers and looking around the cemeteries would be unhealthy if a person “went there.” 

I have since also come to the conclusion that if I “go there,” I am just piggy-backing my own grief/pain issues on to them…and that is blatantly disrespectful.  I need to keep my shit straight.  To be moved by the beauty of the words is one thing, to borrow sorrow because I need an excuse to feel sad is another.

The dead who feed this land deserve better than to have someone steal their spotlight.

I am leaving here soon and when I go, I will leave with a focus on life and leave death to the dead.