The Last Day: Torches and Towers

The last day, July 24^th, we visited a number of cemeteries as we meandered our way back to Paris and CDG airport.

We started the day back at Essex Farm Cemetery, aka McCrea’s dressing station bunker.  As I said in my last post, one of our tour mates stayed behind the day we visited Essex Farm the first time and she wanted to visit it.  She was prepared with a copy of Flander’s Fields so she could read it – or have someone read it – in the field of poppies behind the cemetery.

Essex Farm Cemetery

By this time I had become known to the group as “the keener” and, as I was to learn later in the evening, “the trench poet,” so it really was no surprise to me that my tour mate asked me to read the poem in this sacred place.  Honestly, I was really hoping to be able to recite it there anyway so the invitation was an answered prayer of sorts. 

Since getting back into the routine of my daily life, when people find out I did this tour, I am frequently asked to describe the highlights of my trip; this is one of those moments.  For artists, visiting the birth place of a seminal work of art is really life changing.  I know I have used that phrase many times during the relaying of my trip but I really cannot think of any other way to describe it.  Standing in that poppy field beside the bunker where McCrea treated the wounded, gazing out onto the cemetery where those he tried to help were buried, was exhilarating – I get goose bumps every time I recall the moment.  I could have even been standing on the very spot where the poem was penned…all of this ran through my mind as I took a breath to start the poem. 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row  

(I looked to the rows of white stones behind the fence in front of me and felt the energy of that moment prickle my skin into goose bumps)

That mark our place,  and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing fly

Scarce heard amidst the guns below.

(The cemetery is on a very busy motor way which has a rumble of its own – not guns of course but another representation of the modern world encroaching upon those who sleep restlessly there.  Larks were, indeed singing above the din of the motor way…and I heard every single note as I recited that line.)

We are the dead.  Short days ago

We lived, Saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders’ fields.

(At this point I almost had to stop reciting because I could not speak.  Here I was, some lost traveller from another time, standing in this sacred ground reciting this heart-wrenching lamentation for a lost, beloved friend to the dead in the cemetery only a few feet before me.  The lump in my throat was painful.  There they were…the dead who had lived, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved…and I was speaking to them – directly to them.  It was all too much for a few seconds.)

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch – be yours to hold it high;

(In that moment my mind took me, once again, to the marble figure on the Vimy Memorial brandishing the torch and I wanted to catch the torch, too.  I wanted to catch it from the failing hands of those lying in that cemetery in front of me.)

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep though poppies grow

In Flanders’ fields.

(I wanted to shout a promise to those dead, and to the dead who lay in pieces in the fields all around me for miles and miles, that as long as there was breathe left in me I would be sure to keep the faith.  I wanted to shout and declare and make some grand gesture to prove my fidelity…but in the end I was silent.  I was silent and let my recitation be that promise.)

I needed a moment after reciting the last lines of the poem.  I just wanted to stand in that moment and memorise it in my cells so that whenever I heard, or recited the poem, I would always feel the connection to it I felt that day in that poppy field reciting to the dead who slept in Essex Farm Cemetery.

There were a couple of standout cemeteries on that day, one we had planned to visit and one we stumbled across while visiting another cemetery.  We planned to visit Caix British Cemetery and stepped out to have a look.  It is a small cemetery off of a side road on the edge of a wheat field.  It holds a number of Canadian Military Cross winners and, for the hat badge geek in me, a number of hat badges I had not seen previously.  I snapped a number of pics here and wandered over to the other cemetery we noticed on the drive in to where we parked near Caix Cemetery.

Caix German Cemetery

It turned out that the other cemetery was a German cemetery:  Caix German Cemetery.  The eerie black metal crosses did not seem as foreboding in this shade-dappled place.  What a difference the bright July sun made to the German cemetery.  The first such cemetery I visited during a rainy, grey day.  On this day, the sun seemed to bring a melancholy dignity to the place and seemed to lift some of the heaviness. 

Caix German Cemetery

This was a dignified, peaceful place.  The shame which seemed to cloud places like Neuve Chapelle and Langemark did not appear to exist here.  There was a heaviness of homesickness – a longing to be home – but there was no indication that any of these men felt ashamed to have died here.  Perhaps because many of those in this cemetery perished during the last hundred days – the days of the Kaiserschlacht – the Kaiser’s last push to win the war.  During these battles, even more so than any other battle, the Germans gave everything they had.  The men in Caix German cemetery died with the knowledge that they had done everything they could to win and they did not feel let down by themselves or their comrades.  This may not be the case for those in Neuve Chapelle near Arras.  The early days were not awesome for anyone but the German soldiers, in particular, felt disorganized and forgotten by their leadership.  Reflecting upon those differences helps me to see the differences in the “feel” of those two German cemeteries.

Our last cemetery was Beaucourt Military Cemetery.  Beau, for those who speak French know, is “beautiful” in French.  This tiny cemetery on the hill was, indeed, beautiful and included in my list of the most peaceful cemeteries I had visited. 

Beaucourt Cemetery

Surrounded by poplars and birch, nestled against a wheat field, this cemetery holds a number of men from British tank battalions and Canadian soldiers killed during the Last Hundred Days of fighting.  Norm shared some very interesting stories about these men and we piled back into the van to head to the hotel near the airport.

We had a wonderful last night: dinner and drinks in the hotel and then someone (who shall remain nameless – and it wasn’t me) decided that we had to go to Paris to the Pere Lachaise cemetery and the Eiffel Tower.  By the time we got to Paris it was around 11 at night and, of course, the cemetery was closed but the Eiffel Tower was magnificent by night.  We wandered around for a while and made the hour cab ride back to our hotel.  It was an awesome night.

My trip ended with the same Paris magic with which it had begun – unplanned and unexpected – a surrender to the adventure. 

The life lessons I have gleaned from this trip, I have discovered, have been both easy and very difficult to describe and to convey.  Some have been beyond words and even my photographs cannot capture the experience in a way that matches the emotional/spiritual experience. 

I hope to return to France and Belgium in two years, to do another tour with Norm and to learn more about these sacred fields.  Next time my focus will be on poets – the true trench poets of the Great War – and the lessons they have for a colonial teacher from the prairies, and mountain valleys,  of the Empire.