In September of 2010 a friend and I spent a number of days in northern France and Belgium touring the First World War battlefields and cemeteries.
It was a life-changing experience for both of us. The magnitude of the lives lost in this war was humbling. A lot of tears were shed.
For me it was a personal journey. I felt that I was walking in the footsteps of a grandfather I never knew. He was killed in this war.
Hence, when I returned home to Canada I wrote following:
In Flanders Fields: A Personal Journey
Remembrance Day has taken on a whole new meaning for me.
In September 2010 I made my pilgrimage to the First World War battlefields and cemeteries in northern France and Belgium where the poem In Flanders Fields was written by John McCrae, a wartime Canadian doctor. Along with visiting his underground bunker that served as a hospital where he cared for the sick, the dying and wounded soldiers, we walked the trenches, the battlefields of the Somme, Passchendaele, Ypres, Vimy Ridge, crossed over into No Man's Land at Beaumont-Hamel, experienced the cold, damp underground bunkers, where soldiers stayed for days, who left testament to having been there by carving their initials on the stone walls while waiting to go to the front.
Although I had seen pictures of the rows and rows of white gravestones, nothing prepared me for when I was standing in the middle of these cemeteries.
As far as my eyes could see were the endless white headstones, each one representing a loved one lost – a husband, a father, a son, a grandson, a brother, an uncle. Each soldier's headstone was inscribed with their regiment ensign, name, age (many the ages of my grandsons).
A maple leaf ensign marked the Canadian graves. Then there was the headstones with no names – inscription "A Canadian Soldier of the Great War – Known Only Unto God."
In memory of my mother and her siblings who grew up without their father, I placed a Canadian flag at the monument in Ypres commemorating the 18,000 Canadian soldiers who endured the first ever gas attacks in The Great War. My mother's father, the grandfather I never knew died in the First World War from the effects of a gas attack.
As we travelled up a dirt road to a cemetery in Belgium, I saw poppies growing along the side of the road – blowing gently in the wind. The sight of them brought tears to my eyes and the words in John McCrae's poem came to mind.
"In Flanders Fields the poppies blow between the crosses row on row."
As we left to return home, I came away thinking "what can I share or say to my children, my grandchildren and to others about this sacred place?"
These words are the only words that came to mind: Freedom comes with a price.
On Remembrance Day stop a minute to remember and honour those who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that you and I can live and enjoy the freedom we have in this beautiful country of ours.
