Finally. Again.

I have written a couple of times about my connection to the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, but what I have never written about is how I continued from AQWF and tried to learn as much as I could about the Great War…which led me to Pierre Burton’s Vimy. 

Vimy brought the battles for Vimy Ridge in April of 1917 to life.  The stories of the men involved were vivid and riveting.  The overlapping story structure allowed me to get into and stay in the action with the men.  I learned so many more stories; learned about their lives and their deaths.  The more I read, the more I reacted strongly to the stories of valour, horror, and grief.  I learned, quickly to love the men on the Ridge and to feel a profound sense of pride in their ability to take the Ridge in a little over 8 hours when no one else could in 3 years. 

The soil of the Ridge had been fed with French blood since early days in the war during the fall of 1914 and into 1915.  The Germans had this territory and they were not about to give it up. 

The view from the Ridge is for tens of kilometers in all directions.  It is a plum military position.

After reading of the new tactics created by Canadians, executed by Canadians, and mastered by Canadians, I felt a sense of pride I had not really experienced in that way before. In addition, I had become very curious about military tactics and wanted to learn more.  Of course, the thing about the Great War, once you slip down the “rabbit-hole” that is the Great War, you find out very quickly that this war is all about catastrophic loss of life.  

A solder at the time went so far as to describe the feeling of the age, especially on the front and in the military culture, that life was cheap…humans were completely expendable. The job of the army was to win at all cost and the job of the soldier was to die for that victory – to pay that cost.

Hundreds of thousands of lives have been spent for small parcels of land. 

Seeing it 100 years later, in the form of graveyards, is life altering.  There are millions of grave stones and every stone symbolises a life lost.  Every stone has a story – compelling, intriguing, and very often heart wrenching. And thanks to Norm Christie, our tour meister and Canadian Great War guru, those stories have come to life in the cemeteries.

The monuments and the cemeteries are necessary to compel us to remember those stories; those men whose lives were treated so cheaply.  In these monuments we see the perfect marriage of the power of Art, symbol, and ritual to salve a grieving heart.

For me, no monument has had a more impactful presence than The Spirit of Canada Grieving for Her Lost Sons which is the statue on the front of the Vimy Memorial, looking out onto the Douai plane.  She is the quintessence of maternal grief.

I would stare at her for seconds into minutes into hours.  She was my focus for getting to this place of mud and blood.  I would focus on the iconic image of her looking over the Ridge and force myself into the picture.

On Sunday night I was in the picture, gazing at her over the Douai Plane during the purple Magic time of twilight and had one of the most profound religious experiences I have had in nearly twenty years.

We were supposed to be going to Vimy yesterday but one of my tour mates decided she wanted to see Vimy at night – it could be done…it is lit.  She wanted to experience this.  At first I was cursing her keenness because I was so tired from travelling for days.  In the end I relented, she won us all over, and I am so glad she did.

We stopped at a crater cemetery prior to our stop at Vimy so that by the time we arrived, the sun was perfect. 

I immediately felt in awe of the fact that I was there at all.  This was a life long dream and I was walking in the purple magic of it. 

Each step brought me closer to her.  Closer to that iconic image/location. 

I stopped to capture the grieving mother and father in pictures and I climbed the stairs to the front of the monument.

When my feet hit the top platform, time slowed to near stillness.  I rounded the top of the platform and saw her.  I was actually in the place I had wished myself to be for 22 years and the whole realization completely overwhelmed me.

There she was.  My muse.

I walked up to her and reached out to touch the hem of her tunic as though I could grab a handful of fabric out of the marble.  My fingers slid over the ripples and I realised I had been sobbing since I reached the top of the platform.

I don’t remember much about being up there with her except I kept whispering: “I can’t believe I am finally here.”  I believed in everything in that moment.  All miracles were possible always.

Upon review of the pictures, I found that I had not only captured her image, but my love for her was also what was being captured.

Here she is.

 

And here is the poem I wrote last year.  I think I need to change the title from August 2015  to July 2015.

August, 2015

I will sit at the feet of the marble mother, 

Frozen with grief,

And I will weep

And grieve so deeply as to crack her marble heart.

I will stand among the Kinderkorp ,

In the cemeteries of the "children corps,"

And see the faces of the boys I would have sent away -

Inspiring and shaming into action

A generation of  youth

And beauty

And truth;

Sacrificed to the dogs of war - 

Grizzle for them to gnaw

And bones with which to pick their teeth.

I will lie on their graves - 

The mother on train,

Staring into space,

Counting on her fingers:

1

2

3

4

5  

Silence

1

2

3

4

5

Counting the sons I've lost

Counting in the train on the way 

To the asylum.

My husband takes me there.

I will dream I am dead

A muddy, 

Bloody boy of 21.

Marching on the Marne,

Ypres,

Verdun,

The Somme,

Vimy,

Passchendaele,

Drowning in fatigue.

Too cold to be hungry.

Too hungry to be afraid.

Finally out of the greasy,

Foetid 

Crater water

Dry enough to smoke

                               -but only in a place hidden from snipers' eyes.

I will dream I am dry

And home

And loved

Forever.

Be ready for me ghosts!

When I come to you,

I will weep

And grieve so deeply,

That my gratitude

Will wake you from the dead.

-R. Elke

August 23/14

Keep in mind that this happened on the eve of the day I found Arthur’s grave. 

Yeah.  Crazy.

And, I have to tell ya, this isn’t even all that happened that day.  The next post will be about the screaming trenches at Beaumont-Hamel.  That will finally take me out of the first day.

God, how am I surviving this?

…and today was the Menin Gate…

Fuck.