Dona Nobis Pacem - Grant Us Peace

Dona Nobis Pacem

I went to Vimy Ridge thirty years ago and saw the First World War trenches and the cemeteries. It was a sobering experience. So many cemeteries, Allied and German and all harbouring the remains of wasted young lives. The saddest were those marked ‘Known unto God’ and the most moving and horrifying marked ‘Three soldiers of the Great War, known unto God.’

In other graveyards a single headstone marks ‘Seventeen soldiers of the Great War known unto God.’ Another such marks the final resting place of twenty-five unknown soldiers.

The two-minute silence we observe at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (the day marking the end of the Great War, 1914-1918, the war to end all wars) gives us an opportunity to stop whatever we are doing, wherever we are, to remember and reflect on the tragedy of war. The first minute is to honour those who died fighting for their country and the second minute is to remember those left behind, the parents, the widows, the siblings, the children.

The red poppy is the symbol most commonly associated with remembrance, though Quakers wear white poppies, the symbol of peace.

The following is taken from http://www.greatwar.co.uk/article/remembrance-poppy.htm

‘The field poppy is an annual plant which flowers each year between about May and August. Its seeds are disseminated on the wind and can lie dormant in the ground for a long time. If the ground is disturbed from the early spring the seeds will germinate and the poppy flowers will grow.

This is what happened in parts of the front lines in Belgium and France. Once the ground was disturbed by the fighting, the poppy seeds lying in the ground began to germinate and grow during the warm weather in the spring and summer months of 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918. The field poppy was also blooming in parts of the Turkish battlefields on the Gallipoli peninsula when the ANZAC and British Forces arrived at the start of the campaign in April 1915.’

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a doctor serving in Belgium with the Canadian Armed Forces was so moved by the devastation he saw that he wrote ‘In Flanders’ Fields’ in 1915: 

In Flanders' Fields
                                                                                                                                          In Flanders' fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders' fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high,
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders' Fields.

The most telling epitaph is that written by John Maxwell Edmonds (1875 - 1958) in the Kohima Allied war cemetery.

‘When You Go Home,

Tell Them Of Us And Say,

For Their Tomorrow,

We Gave Our Today.’

Our future, the future of our world, is in our children’s and grandchildren’s hands – I hope they make a better job of looking after this beautiful planet than we have.

ABC Wednesday V is for Vimy Ridge

The Battle of Vimy Ridge by Richard Jack (1866-1952) painted c1918

The men are loading a QF 4.5 inch howitzer

Canadian War Museum

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Vimy Ridge is a steep cliff five miles to the north-east of Arras, in France, giving an uninterrupted view for many kilometres in all directions. The battle of Vimy Ridge took place between 9^th and 12^th April, 1917 as part of the first phase of the British-led Battle of Arras. The objective was to take control of the escarpment which had been held by the Germans since 1914. The main participants were the Canadian Corps against three divisions of the German Sixth Army. 97,000 Canadians were supported by 73,000 British troops and opposed 30 to 45,000 Germans.

It was the first time that all four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force fought together. These men had been drawn from all parts of the country and it was the fact that they fought as a cohesive unit that made the battle important for Canada and a symbol of national unity. It was also a symbol both of Canadian triumph and sacrifice. The widely held belief in Canada is that her national identity and sense of nationhood arose from the victory at Vimy Ridge.

Late at night on 8^th April and in the early hours of 9^th April final preparations were made for the attack, following three weeks of heavy bombardment by the British. At 0530 hours the barrage began. Mines laid under no man’s land and German trenches were detonated. The Canadian Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Byng, advanced behind a creeping barrage, light artillery firing shells ahead of the troops to prevent the enemy seeing them and shooting at them. This tactic was intended to allow the enemy little time to leave their dugouts and protect their ground.

At first the Germans were able to defend their positions, despite heavy losses, but as the Canadians advanced, many of the German guns were overrun. They were unable to be moved to the rear because the horses used to haul them had been killed in the initial gas attack. Although the Hague Declaration of 1899 and the Hague Convention of 1907 prohibited the use of chemical weapons in time of war, more than 124,000 tons of gas were manufactured by the end of the First World War. The French were the first to deploy them in World War I, using tear gas.

By nightfall three days later Vimy Ridge was under the control of the Canadian Corps, which had lost 3,598 killed and 7,004 wounded. The number of German casualties is unknown, but around 4,000 men became prisoners of war.

Four Victoria Crosses were awarded to Canadian soldiers and at least two Orders Pour le Merité, the highest Prussian military honour, to German commanders.

The Germans did not attempt to recapture the ridge, which remained under British jurisdiction until the end of the war.

In 1922 France gave Canada the use in perpetuity of 250 acres of the battleground site to serve as a memorial park. The ground is riddled with tunnels, trenches, shell craters and unexploded armaments but part of it has been made safe and accessible to visitors. Today the trenches look benign and belie the horror of trench warfare.

Mother Canada mourning her dead

Part of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial is Canada’s largest overseas war memorial.

It is sobering to travel in this part of France and to see the war cemeteries for those thousands of young men, German, British, Canadian and so many more, who died believing they were fighting a just war. The saddest and most poignant of all are the headstones which bear the words ‘Known unto God’, particularly when a single grave contains the remains of two or three men.

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