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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2014 12:18:17 GMT
Vimy Ridge is a lovely peaceful place which is engraved forever in Canadian history but probably forgotten by almost everybody else, including the French. For example, I only learned of its existence on travel forums where Canadian visitors were regularly asking about how to get there. In my defence, I will say that we have so many battlefields in France that it is hard to know about all of them. Particularly, northeastern France has been pulverized so many times that it is remarkable that anybody still lives there, much less rebuilding their towns and villages time after time. The Battle of Vimy Ridge took place from 9 to 12 April 1917 opposing the Canadian Corps and the German 6th Army. You can read all about the battle in the usual places, so I will just say that Canada won the battle although it suffered 10,602 casualties. Apparently this was not the most important battle that Canadian troops ever fought, but what gives Vimy Ridge great significance is that it was the first battle where all four divisions of the Canadian army fought together with troops from every part of the country. The battle is considered to be the moment that Canada came together as a nation.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2014 12:31:21 GMT
It took eleven years to build the memorial, and it was inaugurated in July 1936 by King Edward VII and French President Albert Lebrun. 50,000 Canadian and French veterans and their families attended the ceremony. German veterans were not really welcome yet back then, and anyway they were busy with other plans in 1936.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2014 12:35:27 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2014 12:38:32 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2014 16:14:16 GMT
Thank you, Kerouac. I hope to make the visit one day, I can only hope I go on a day as lovely as you lucked upon. The trip will be unbearably melancholy as it is.
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Post by mich64 on Mar 4, 2014 18:48:09 GMT
Thank you Kerouac for this thread. We have been twice. On our second visit we ensured we made time to sign up for the trench tour. The guides from the Museum are Canadian University students who sign up for a 4 month placement. The tour we were assigned to included visitors from Canada, the USA and England. Our guide was very enthusiastic and knowledgeable. His descriptions and stories evoked feelings of fear, claustrophobia and sadness.
If I remember correctly, the mounds are maintained by herds of goats. I would not be surprised if those were gopher holes. When we drove through the country side we frequently seen groups of men walking their ploughed fields with a rifle in their arms and their dogs ahead hunting what we assumed must be gophers.
I recommend visitors visit the Museum first to then be able to appreciate the magnitude and sculpture of the Memorial.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2014 19:05:04 GMT
Unfortunately, it was only when I took the road to Arras that I saw where the museum was, but I didn't have time to stop anymore.
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Post by mich64 on Mar 4, 2014 19:45:20 GMT
That is what happened to us the first time. We were so focused on visiting the Memorial and perhaps unaware there was a Museum there as well. We did spot it before we left and visited briefly but we had no time to wait for a trench tour and vowed if we were ever to return we would ensure we did.
On both visits we noticed a jogger's club on the pathways and remarked on how different life is now.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2014 19:56:09 GMT
Yes, I had to navigate among hundreds of joggers and cyclists on Sunday morning. The car park at the memorial was completely full, but it was almost exclusively local joggers and hikers, in view of the local licence plate numbers.
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Post by questa on Mar 5, 2014 0:56:56 GMT
Did you see any mention of the Australian troops that fought and died at Vimy Ridge and Verdun? The numbers were so high for a young country with a small population. After the war 2 towns were established in the Adelaide Hills with land and farming equipment given to returned soldiers to help them start new lives. The towns were named Vimy Ridge and Verdun and are still prospering.
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Post by mich64 on Mar 5, 2014 3:00:05 GMT
There was so much information to take in at once Questa but I do remember large charts on the wall in the Museum defining numbers of people from each country and story boards as well. There was also a lot of information on the Commonwealth countries. How wonderful that they received so much help when the returned home and that the towns are still prospering.
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Post by mossie on Mar 6, 2014 20:29:21 GMT
I navigated my boss in his car round these sites some years ago as he wanted to see them. I found it very moving to see the endless lists of names of men who have no known graves, and the row upon row of tombstones commemorating soldiers, lined up as though they were still on parade. We stayed in Ypres and attended the evening service where the local Fire Brigade buglers still play the Last Post every night. That brought tears to my eyes and made me remember my favourite uncle who was killed in Malta in 1942, and also those people who died while I was in the RAF. some I had honoured as a part of a firing party, others I had carried in coffins. These things burn into your memory.
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Post by mich64 on Mar 6, 2014 21:24:45 GMT
We have also attended the Last Post ceremony in Ypres Mossie and we had tears as well and we are civilians with no military service so I can imagine how powerful it would be for Veteran's and current service members. A few days before we had visited the gravesite of my Great Uncle John (the brother of my dear grandmother who had always told me stories about him) in a joint Cemetery in a small town between Vimy and Arras. Your perspective on these threads is always heartfelt as you share pieces of your life experience that acknowledge more to what I was taught in school or read in books.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 7, 2014 1:59:21 GMT
Yes, it is very important. However, mich, while your husband isn't in military service, the line of work he is in as a firefighter has many similarities.
I never got to Vimy Ridge - I had been accepted as one of the guides (they engage History students) but I won another scholarship, so I had to turn it down. I have been to Canadian and other Commonwealth War Graves in the Netherlands, and in Dieppe, but not Vimy.
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Post by mich64 on Mar 7, 2014 2:29:00 GMT
I do agree with you Lagatta that there are similarities and the fact that the ceremony is given by their local firefighter's I think probably aided in our tears. It is an incredible experience to be standing there in the solidarity of respect with people from all over the world who come to witness this event each night.
Yes, I do believe of all the students I spoke with at the Vimy Memorial and the Juno Beach Center were History majors. How exciting that you were chosen! and the fact that you had other options as well, well done! You must have been a very good student.
I think I have mentioned before that two of my husband's Uncles are buried there. One is Cintheaux, France, near Juno Beach and the other in Bergen-op-zoom, The Netherlands, we have been to both gravesites.
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Post by questa on Mar 7, 2014 3:01:15 GMT
I have been to the War cemetery in Thailand where the headstones are in lines with a rose bush beside each one. The whole garden extends so far and is divided into the national areas. There are also the graves of the brave Thai citizens killed for smuggling food and messages to the soldiers who were building the Thai Burma railway.
Nearby is a museum with life-like statues of the men showing what they did...labouring, treating sick, a doctor operating, some cooking with a pot of broth etc. They were skeletal, wearing nothing but a small loin cloth and again, like in the cemetery, I was brought to tears by how YOUNG they were.
If you get to Thailand, go down to the River Kwai bridge (a new one)and pay respects to the thousands of the War graves there.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2014 6:41:59 GMT
It's interesting that the graves have rose bushes along with the tombstones in Thailand. That is the same as the main French cemetery in Verdun.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2014 21:05:41 GMT
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Post by htmb on Mar 20, 2014 0:20:11 GMT
Unbelievable!!!!!
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Post by questa on Mar 20, 2014 1:12:04 GMT
I would have expected it to still be dangerous...even more so now it is more unpredictable
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Post by mich64 on Mar 20, 2014 11:28:55 GMT
We had a guide take us to Ypres for the Last Post ceremony two years ago. Part of his tour was a stop at a farm where we were taken inside the barn and viewed a tables full of mortar shells, guns and debris that the farmer finds in his fields. The clay pushes up debris up to the surface still. He says in the area where he lives that there has been many farmer deaths through the years, one being his neighbours son.
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Post by mich64 on Mar 20, 2014 11:32:31 GMT
Here is a photo from his barn.
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Post by mich64 on Mar 20, 2014 11:35:51 GMT
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Post by mich64 on Mar 20, 2014 11:42:47 GMT
My Great Uncle's grave in a small town between Vimy and Arras. The Canadian Veteran's website gave me directions right to his headstone.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2017 5:40:50 GMT
I happen to be not very far from Vimy today, and the whole area is obviously overflowing with Canadians as this weekend marks the 100th anniversary of the battle.
Watching last night's regional news, my curiosity was finally satisfied on how they make all of those thousands of intricately carved tombstones. There is a big computer controlled carving machine that carefully makes all of the motifs and writes the names -- very impressive. The report also made it clear why just about all of the tombstones look so perfect all the time. They are replaced with newly carved ones as often as necessary.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 8, 2017 9:28:01 GMT
Of course the original carvers didn't have such equipment. Those Commonwealth war graves seem carefully tended everywhere. French civilians in Dieppe also flower them, as do Dutch people at the Netherlands grave sites. Sadly, many conflicts since then have also left unexploded munitions and mines. Many farmers have been killed or maimed in Cambodia, the Congo, the former Yugoslavia and other places...
Yes, many Canadians are travelling there this week.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 4:18:11 GMT
I see that besides Justin Trudeau and François Hollande, Princes Charles, William and Harry will be attending the commemoration, as will Nicola Sturgeon. 20,000 people are expected on the ridge today.
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Post by mich64 on Aug 18, 2018 22:26:57 GMT
Reviewing this thread fills me with sadness and pride at the same time. Sad for the fallen and pride for how they are honorably remembered.
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