Where the 22nd of July had so many overwhelming moments: from the sea of headstones to the endless columns of
names of the missing, to relief for learning a way to see the experience in a
new, life affirming way, the 23rd of July was almost the
opposite. The spirit linking the experiences
was not one of sameness but one of contrast.
So many moments of this day were incongruous: from healing to murder; from cemeteries on
the busiest of roads to finding them, once more in beautiful, peaceful places
making them more like parks than places where the dead rest; from realising
once again that deep below the surface of the fertile fields lie, what Scott
called, the “iron harvest.” So many strange pairings on this day.
The whole day had really strange “energy” right from the
start. We were down a body because my female
compatriot, Elaine, was exhausted and wanted to stay behind and rest. With a person missing, the van really wasn’t
the same. I think, too, that is many
ways I wasn’t “over” the visits of the previous day. There were a lot of big emotions to process,
as I shared in the last post, and that depth of experience really needed time
and distance to settle. In addition to
all of that, it was our second to last day of the tour…really our last day of just
visiting cemeteries. The next day we
would be returning to Paris to the hotel near the airport and preparing to
return to Canada. I was not really sure
if I really wanted to go home yet. I
missed my family but I was enjoying learning all that I had learned and I was
not sure that I wanted that to end just yet.
Working through that now, I see that with all of those
conflicting feelings, this second to last day could not have been anything
other than incongruous…it makes sense that nothing seemed to just come together
like it did the day before. Even
subtleties of the day conflicted, or had interesting ironies about them. Let’s start with our first stop of the day (…see
what I did there?).
We started our day at the bunker where Canadian field doctor
John Mc Crae worked for seventeen days during the Second Battle of Ypres in his
dressing station and the place where he was inspired to write In Flanders Fields.
 |
| McCrea's bunker |
McCrae was an epidemiologist from an Ontario
hospital before the war. After his time
in the dressing stations in Flanders, he moved on to France where he worked at
the head of a hospital. He died in 1918
of pneumonia…a doctor of infectious diseases died of an infectious disease…see
where this day is going? I told you the
energy of the day was strange.
Back to the bunker: this
is the place where Dr. Mc Crae tried desperately, in desperate conditions, to
make shattered men whole and where he lost his best friend Alexis Helmer. It was extremely powerful to be there in that
place where a piece of Art was born.
Admittedly, I am not the biggest fan of the poem as a poem but, rather,
find respect for it as a commentary piece.
Its importance lies in what it represented and how the soldiers of the
day said, time and again, how it perfectly described the conditions, the world
of the war. On a warm summer’s day,
there are plenty of poppies in that place.
There were the days I visited.
 |
Essex Farm Cemetery - the cemetery connected to McCrea's
dressing station. The hill in the background is covered
with poppies. |
We returned to this place the following day, on the 24th,
to give Elaine a chance to see it. I
will revisit the experience on that day in another post because it has magic of
its own.
Our next stop was the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery. This cemetery was interesting because it was
a hospital cemetery and we had not visited a hospital cemetery to that point. The headstones rather than being placed “willy
nilly,” as they were in some cemeteries (especially cemeteries which were
original to the battlefields) were in perfect rows, the names were in
alphabetical order, and in order of the date of death. In addition, there was a headstone of a
nursing sister- only one of two buried in the whole of France from this time
period. I found this very interesting.
This cemetery was large but did not have the same heaviness
of Tyne Cot or the Menin Gate. Unlike
Tyne Cot or Menin Gate, this place had no consistency of “feeling” or “energy.” Some sections felt peaceful or resigned while
others, it seems, resonated fear and resistance…feelings I am sure many of
those men felt in their last, tortured days in the hospital surrounded by
varying degrees of suffering, dying, and death or, for some, comfort.
In order to access the cemetery, you have to go through an
information centre which explained the difference between field hospitals, dressing
stations, hospitals, and so on. There
were pictures, maps and diagrams of the area, how the light rail systems were
set up to deliver supplies to the front lines and bring back the wounded on the
return trip. What this meant was, if you
had a rail map of the area from the Great War, chances are that today
cemeteries, along the same route, were probably dressing stations of some kind. Again, the history comes to life when you
have this information. With that
knowledge, it makes sense now why so many of the cemeteries, on that day, were
connected to field hospitals – they were all on the light rail route connecting
them to Lijssenthoek field hospital/cemetery.
 |
| A photo in the info centre of a Canadian field hospital |
 |
| Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Belgium |
This cemetery held German headstones as well, much to my
surprise. It seems that during this war,
in some parts of the front, wounded German prisoners of war received the same
quality of medical care that the Entente soldiers received. This is a tremendous contrast to later conflicts
during which POWs were treated like animals rather than human beings.
After another cemetery along the former light rail lines, we
stopped in Poperinghe (Petit Ypres) to check out the area where the shooting
post remains. The shooting post, as you
have guessed, is the post to which deserters of the British forces were tied
for execution by firing squad. A couple
of Canadian soldiers were executed for desertion. In a cell in Poperinghe, adjacent to the
shooting post is a collection of a number of holding cells, their walls made of
blocks of chalk. On one of those walls,
one of the soon to be executed Canadian soldiers carved a facsimile of his hat
badge.
 |
| The Canadian hat badge carved into the wall |
 |
| The shooting post |
Needless to say, this space was not a pleasant one in which
to hang out for any length of time so I made note of the place, took photos of
the carving in the wall, and made my quick exit. Between the cramped cell, the limited light,
and the ooze of terror, shame, and injustice seeping from the place, I really
could not be in the space for long. My
skin was crawling from all that I have just described. I was happy to leave that space and head over
to the café for a coffee with “the boys.”
After Poperinghe, we moved on to another fairly large
cemetery: Reninghelst New Military Cemetery.
I enjoyed this cemetery for its diversity. Here there were a number of different
nationalities which I had not seen represented previously in other
cemeteries. An example of this is the representation
of members of the Chinese Labour Corps who worked on the major projects of the war
such as the building of rail lines, communication trenches, services, sapping
(tunneling), and all other manner of labour required to keep the war machine
moving.
A Good Reputation
Endures Forever is inscribed on many of these headstones, along with the
name of the individuals in Chinese characters.
In addition to the Chinese headstones, I also found a number
of South African headstones with the information and personal inscriptions
written in Afrikaans, illustrating the policy of the Commonwealth War Graves
Commission (CWGC) that the culture and language of the individuals serving in
the war would be preserved and honoured on their headstones – an interesting
policy from a country that was hell-bent on homogenizing the planet through
imperialism…but I digress.
In 100% contrast to Poperinghe and the shooting post, Norm
took us to La Plus Douve Farm Cemetery, one of the most beautiful cemeteries I
had visited during the entire trip – easily in my top three. This tranquil cemetery is part of a working dairy
farm, nearly smack in the middle of the farm, actually. To the right of the cemetery is a shell
crater which over time has become a beautiful pond complete with bulrushes and
water lilies. The farmer has built a wharf
and decking at the edge of the “pond” allowing sunbathers to bask in the sun near
the water on days like the day we were there. One hundred year old oak and maple trees
surround the cemetery, shading the roses and lavender blooming beside the headstones.
 |
| La Plus Douve Cemetery |
A weeping willow tree grows in the far right
corner of the cemetery (when the pond is on your right), an extraordinary place
to sit, prop up against its trunk, and read for a while. One could very easily forget that this place
was a cemetery – it felt more like a park or a private garden…hushed with love
and peace. There was absolutely no
anguish here. This would be a place
where the souls would swim and fish and dream in the willow shade for
eternity…completely in peace. All one
could do in the presence of all this was just to sigh. Really.
Just to sigh.
The last couple of stops I want to mention were, to no one’s
surprise, in contrast to the La Plus Douve Cemetery. Voormezeele Enclosure is the final resting
place for a number of soldiers Norm affectionately referred to as “Agar’s boys.” Agar Adamson was a key figure to many of the “lads”
from some of the Ontario divisions. He
was an older man when the war started and quickly became a father figure for
many of the young men in his command. In
the Voormezeele Enclosure, at least four of Agar’s officers and some of his
soldiers are buried. Agar kept a detailed
journal and wrote to his wife daily, sometimes more than once per day. Through his journal and his letters, his days
in the Great War can be vividly recalled.
The dates on the headstones of Lt. Donald Ewan Cameron, Lt.
F. D. Farquhar D.S.O (Distinguished Service Order), Lt. H.C. Buller D.S.O, and H. G. Bellinger coordinate with many of Agar’s
letters and his description to his wife of the loss of these men. He was
heartbroken by the losses. His letters
and biography have been lovingly reprinted by Norm Christie and can be
purchased through his web site CEF Books.
Look ‘em up. The letters are beautifully
written and give a high ranking officer’s view of the war – from a commander
who, contrary to the stereotype of the Great War, cared a great deal for his “boys.” Agar was a gentleman when being a gentleman
was a way of life. Check him out. You will not be disappointed.
The Voormezeele Enclosure also gave me an example of someone
who had died under an assumed name but whose name was found out after his death
and engraved on his headstone. Norm had
told us about these stones but, until now, I had not found one. This stone was particularly interesting because
not only did this young man enlist under an assumed name, he also enlisted as a
completely different religion.
Joseph Page enlisted in the 18th battalion of the
Canadian Expeditionary Forces (CEF) and died in Flanders on April 10,
1916.
When Norm did his research into
this young man, he discovered that Joseph identified himself as a Christian on
his enlistment papers. Joseph many have
served as Joseph Page, Christian but, back home, Joseph was Joseph Rousinhtol
whose family was of Jewish faith. All of
this was discovered when the family returned the paperwork after Joseph’s
death. So, Joseph is buried under a Star
of David rather than a Latin Cross.
The Served As
inscriptions made me imagine an entire, complex back story for this soldier –
one where he was afraid to “out” himself as Jewish for fear of…discrimination?...harassment?...isolation? All are very possible from what I have read
about the lives of Jewish soldiers in the British forces – most notably the
poet Isaac Rosenberg, who was brutally treated by other soldiers in his corps.
Brutal. Fear enough
to denounce your faith - the faith of your ancestors. In death, at least, his ancestors found him.
After a few more stops, our day was winding down. We stopped so Scott could grab some pics of a
monument to some of the fliers of the war.
At this particular stop, Norm explained the march to Kitchener’s Wood
which took place late one night in April 1915.
We looked across a potato field to a copse of trees in the distance –
Kitchener’s Wood today. I tried to
capture it in a photograph…to little success.
Beside where we parked was a large dairy farm, the farm
owned by the family whose potato field leads to Kitchener’s Wood. Norm has a friendly relationship with this
farmer from days when he filmed For King
and Empire in this field and encouraged us to wander over to the farm and
see if there were any shells in his driveway.
Sure enough. Just inside of the
drive way was a pile of shells and hand grenades ploughed up from his field
probably when he planted his potato crop.
 |
| The shells from the potato field |
Again, in keeping with the day’s leit motif of incongruity,
this moment was difficult to process:
these instruments of death found during a process designed to produce
life. A “harvest of iron,” as Scott
wrote about it later on the picture of the shells I posted on line. It really is hard to believe that a century
later these shells are still being brought to the surface – many of them still “live”
– as if no time has passed. They are oxidized
and often mud encrusted but are still deadly.
Crazy!
We meandered our way back to Ypres, past a farmer’s field
with four cement bunkers still as intact as they were a century ago; horses and
cattle grazing around them…just a meaningless piece of their environment…a
bizzaro world of green grass, summer sunshine, and scars of a one hundred year
old war. Just didn’t seem to match up in
my head.
Later that night, as I re-packed my suitcase, I thought
about that field, the shells, and the farms and thought about how amazing this
place was: this beautiful country with
its rich fertile fields appearing for all the world like an Eden but, for those
who know the history of the places, carrying, deep in its soil, the soul
wrenching anguish of loss, destruction, and barrenness.
I was happy that we still had a few more hours to spend, the
next day, in this land of contrast. I
wanted a little more before heading home.
I wasn’t quite done yet.
