Page 20 - Giv'er Miramichi magazine - Spring 2017

Vimy Ridge Never Leaves You

by Judy Bowman

Arrive at Vimy Ridge before living. So vivid was this impression
the sun rises to 8 am. Arrive while that when I awoke it stayed with me
the birds are breaking the silent for months. Without the dead we
dawn with song. Arrive while mist were helpless. So I have tried to
still lingers and swirls in the shell show this monument to Canada’s
craters. fallen, what we owed them and
Stand. Face the monument. Be would forever owe them.”
still. Listen. Feel the powerful sense You can walk through several
of presence in this sacred place, a trenches lined in neat stone, long
presence that is waiting and aware. clean of the muck, blood and
Is it the spirits of the 100,000 bodies. On your way to the
French casualties who died on their monument, you can mark the shell
attempts to take the seven kilometre craters lined with grass and wild
ridge? Have they united with the flowers. They are behind a wire
dead from our own four Canadian barrier; many of the fields are still
divisions? One hundred years ago, alive with unexploded ordnance.
our troops succeeded where the Even at a distance the
larger French and British offensives monument is massive, and
failed but at great cost of life: 3598 overwhelming in beauty and
killed and 7000 wounded. significance on arrival.
Perhaps the dream by Walter It marks the 11,285 Canadian
Alward, sculptor of the Vimy soldiers who have no known
Monument speaks to this presence. graves. Thousands make
In an interview in 1921, he said he pilgrimage yearly. Read the names.
was inspired by a dream. Marvel at the figures vision of Alward. Stand beside the
“When things were at their blackest in France, I went to figure of “Canada Mourning her Sons” as she looks down on
sleep one night after dreaming of the muck and misery over the Douai Plains 145 metres below. The monument was
there ... my spirit was like a thing tormented ... I dreamed I placed here where the Canadians captured the highest point
was in a great battlefield. I saw our men going in by the of the ridge in a frontal bayonet charge against machine gun
thousands and being mowed down by the sickles of death … positions.
Suffering beyond endurance at the sight, I turned my eyes Think of what this place means to Canadians, to the
and found myself looking down an avenue of poplars. descendants of the soldiers, to you. Spend time.
Suddenly through the avenue I saw thousands marching to When you leave Vimy, you will discover that Vimy
the aid of our armies. They were the dead. They rose in Ridge will never leave you.
masses, filed silently by and entered the fight to aid the

20 www.GiverMiramichi.com Spring 2017