Walking in Europe

Big kms (119!), impactful sites, moving ceremony to end the day..

It’s hard not to catch a sob in your throat when you first lay eyes on the Vimy Ridge memorial. In fact I didn’t catch it in time and let out a few…. I don’t think it is a national pride thing for me. I was simply awestruck and moved I guess. The memorial has immense aesthetic beauty; it is a powerful work of art, and when you look at the expressions on the faces and the stance or repose of the sculpted figures, you simply cannot suppress the sadness of the thought of the terrifying-and in some cases fatal-experience the young men had who were far from home and away from families who loved them; being sent into such a horrific battle. Between 15-20,000 Canadians were involved in direct combat that day April 9, 1917. They had been huddling in the tunnels for 18 hours waiting for the artillery to stop and then sent out and “over the top.” They won on that particular day, but at considerable cost. 10,600 casualties, 3,600 of which were fatal.

Equally impactful was the Loos Memorial which holds the inscription of A.D. Gillespie’s name. His name appears on one of the panels inside the enclosure under the Argyll and Sutherland listings for Lieutenants. His remains were never recovered but he was lost at the Battle of Loos in September to October, 1915. Seeing his name had a similar effect for me as did Vimy: AD Gillespie was a young, brilliant scholar and thinker who had such potential and whose life was taken so young. But what made seeing his name so special was to visit his marker on the route that he dreamed about in 1915, and to visit it over 100 years later with Tom, Alice, and Theo, descendants of AD’s sister and distant relatives to my family. I will be forever grateful to them for including me in this journey.

On the September 20 leg, we also stopped at the Faubourg D’Amiens Commonwealth Memorial at Arras. Alice and Tom’s brother-in-law Len who has done so much research on WW1, helped me find a relative of friend and colleague back home, Neil. Cornelius Lill of the East Yorkshires is remembered there. Thank you Len!

We ended the day crossing into Belgium and arriving in Ypres (Ieper) in time to attend the nightly 8 pm ceremony at the Menin Gate. The Menin Gate is the largest British Commonwealth memorial to the some 300,000 British and Commonwealth (including thousands of Canadians) soldiers who defended the town of Ypres for four years. The remains of 90,000 were never recovered. Their names adorn the walls of the gate. The people of Ypres have been honouring them nightly since 1928. It’s an incredibly moving ceremony and sacred place.