The "Iron Harvest"...when things just don't want to match up

Where the 22^nd 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 23^rd 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 24^th, 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 18^th 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.