In Remembrance of the Royal Newfoundlanders and Gordon Highlanders

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Battle of the Somme.

Want to hear about some crazy shit?  Go to the CBC site and find the 1966 interviews for the 50th anniversary of the battle.  Listen to the surviving Newfoundlanders talk about that first day...how they felt like they were walking into a hailstorm of hot lead.

The tone of "just getting the job done, everyone,"  is awe inspiring.

Seriously, check it out.

When I got home from France last year, I made a slide show of all I had seen and the history of the cemetery/people in the cemetery.  In that show I talked about what I experienced at Beaumont Hammel - the main location for the opening day of the Battle of the Somme - for the Royal Newfoundlanders and the Canadians who learned, once again, what hell and waste looked like up close in a way that was much different from Flanders, where they had been since around April of 1915.

I share that with you today because it is my hope that those spirits who were so angry/terrified/grief ridden will be freed tomorrow by the visitors, thousands of whom will be there, hundreds of whom will be descendants of those massacred boys.

I will be back there in spirit, at the Danger Tree, looking out onto the pitted field, thinking of them.

The Danger Tree

Blessed be their spirits.

This is what I wrote:

 This was my first day to see so many headstones, cemeteries, so many dead.  Before I got here I honestly thought I was going to suffer from some serious depression or be bowled over by the tormented spirits.

Up to this point, I hadn’t really experienced any of those tortured souls…until this spot.  In fact, upon reflection, this was the most tortured and angry and uncomfortable place I would visit on my whole trip.

I felt uneasy from the time we stepped into the park.  The monument was ok – not too much in terms of “angry energy,” the walk around the park in the other trenches was not awesome but it was ok.  The area out in the German line was, again, uncomfortable but not terrible. 

The crater cemetery was more peaceful.

Crater cemetery

When I got to the spot in the trenches that is captured in this photo, there was a palpable scream.  If I had been alone, I would have taken a knee until it passed.  As it was, I took a second.  I almost was unable to move.  I squeezed my eyes shut and took several breaths before I could take a few steps out of the area. 

Who ever was unhappy to be there – or whatever happened there has not really worn off in 100 years.  For a century this spirit/these spirits have been screaming, suffering, unable to free themselves or be free.  Maybe their people have not been able to come to them and take them home.

I left a gift and pleaded with him/them to be at peace, to go find their people, to go home. 

This was the only time on my whole trip that I felt frightened and overwhelmed in an aggressive way by the presence of the spirits of the place.  There were several places where I would feel the presence of peaceful spirits – spirits who were quite happy to be where they were.  Beautiful cemeteries with embracing trees and intoxicating flowers.

Perhaps the brutality of this particular battle made these men feel betrayed or lied to.  They were not properly equipped and, as is often reported, the men felt like they were leaning into a storm of steel with the bullets of German machine guns screaming toward them. 

Gordon Highlanders Monument

The leaders told the men to advance, even though the barbed wire was not cut for them, as they had been told.  The leaders told them to advance and advance into the bullets, even after the thousands of bodies piled up.

 This battle becomes the opening of the slaughterhouse of the Western Front.  It must be remembered.