And so it begins.

And so it begins.

This morning I lovingly taped together my well-loved, battered copy of All Quiet on the Western Front.  This is the very same copy of the book which started me on this journey in the first place.  It is the copy I borrowed from a school 22 years ago.  I was looking for an interesting read at the time. 

Last summer I described the impact of this book on my life and it was last summer when I began to meditate upon the anniversary of the beginning of the Great War.  I wrote poetry about the Vimy Monument and mused about the pull of our ancestors from the dusty past.  I dreamed of columns of men marching out of the fog toward the killing fields of France.  I dreamed of standing on that holy ground, shedding tears for the dead sons of mothers who would never see their boys again as they remembered them: alive, happy, or whole.

In one week, I will be in Paris. 

One week tomorrow, I will be on my way to Arras.  

And in many ways I just cannot believe it is happening.  In a week I will be standing on sacred ground.  I will be running my hands through the soil enriched by the blood of men who never, truly understood the horrors they would have to endure.  I will be living a dream I have had for over 22 years.  A miracle, really.

I have decided to make this a blog post because a friend and fellow student of the Great War asked me to blog my trip.  I thought I would start now because I want to capture all of it: before, during, and after.

Honestly, part of me is afraid that I have hyped this trip so much for myself that I have set myself up for disappointment.  The other part of me tells myself not to be such a downer and to just relax into the experience.  What if they, the spirits, decide not to talk to me or to not reach out?  I do not have any ancestors in those fields that I can confirm for sure so I am reaching out to the souls of others.  I know I have ancestors on both sides who fought and died but they are untraceable to me because my paternal great-grandfather changed his last name to make it easier for the bureaucrats to spell when he arrived in Canada. 

I can’t find my Prussian dead.  I don’t know their names. 

So what I’ve done is I’ve chosen some names.  Names that could have been my mother’s mother’s family.  Names from my childhood – an “invisible friend” named Arthur who had to sit at the table with us at meal times…who disappeared after my sister was born. 

I’ve chosen some names from my father-in-law’s book of names of the Great War dead, complete with a description of where they are buried so I know where to look.  I have found an Arthur Rutherford…who knows…maybe he’s related to me through my Granny, Eva Rutherford.  I will look for him.  Who knows, maybe he is my war dead.

This trip feels so heavy already.  I think mostly out of sheer gratitude to the universe, and my husband and daughter, for their encouragement and help to make it possible.  I never actually thought I would ever get to make this trip.  The weight of this realisation overwhelms me.

But I am grateful.

And anxious.

And excited.

I am preparing for whatever comes, or doesn’t, during this trip – this pilgrimage to this soul-soaked land; this land watered with tears and blood.

Now that my battered copy of All Quiet… is patched up, I am ready.  Paul and I and the boys will wander the fields of France and I will know that I am not alone.

 

Ghosts.  The Vimy Memorial