Last week we visited Arras in northern France as a base for visiting the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. (See our earlier post.) Our first stop in this picturesque city was the “Le Beffroi d’Arras”, the belfry. Hard to imagine that the 50-metre spire was reduced to a 10-metre stub during WW I and then completely rebuilt. Many of the other beautiful buildings also had to be recreated since the city was hugely damaged during the Battle of Arras.
For Canadians, the most significant aspect of the Battle of Arras is the part of it that was fought on Vimy Ridge. To quote Wikipedia:
The Battle of Vimy Ridge was the first occasion when the four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force fought together and it was made a symbol of Canadian national achievement and sacrifice. A 100 ha (250-acre) portion of the former battleground serves as a memorial park and site of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial.
We went out to the Vimy Memorial the morning after our arrival. Even the drive out there was sobering; we passed three large WW I cemeteries in a 15-minute drive, and those are just three of over 3,000 (!) Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries scattered among the battlefields just in France. And amazingly, the CWGC is building new cemeteries in which to inter newly discovered remains. (See www.hurriyetdailynews.com/new-cemetery-for-wwi-soldiers-to-be-built-in-france-182914)
The site of the Vimy Memorial is a graphic reminder of the harsh realities of the Great War. The Grange Tunnel and the trenches just 25 metres from the enemy trenches, the craters from artillery and mines throughout the site, and the cemetery with hundreds of Canadian war dead on the site, many of them killed on April 9th, 2017 when the battle began.
While the monument itself is impressive, it’s the details that are really touching such as the inscribed names of the 11,285 Canadian soldiers who died in France in WW I and whose final resting place was then unknown. Those 11,285 are just the ones without a known grave; in total over 60,000 Canadian soldiers died. The deaths were about 10% of the “some 619,000 Canadians who had enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force for service overseas. This was an enormous contribution from a population of just under 8 million in 1914. Approximately seven percent of the total population of Canada was in uniform at some point during the war, and hundreds of thousands of additional Canadians worked on the home front in support of the war.” (www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/going-to-war/canada-enters-the-war/canada-at-war) Considering that some of France’s neighbours didn’t even lift a finger to help defend France during WW I, it’s no wonder that France gave the land upon which the Vimy Memorial stands to Canada in perpetuity, and the twin pylons of the monument are of equal height; one is inscribed with the Canadian maple leaf and the other with the fleur-de-lis of France.
On our return to Arras we passed two more huge cemeteries, one for French dead, one for German. The total number of military deaths in World War I was 15 to 22 million, with about the same number of civilian deaths (including 2,000 in Canada), so Canadian deaths certainly pale in comparison to the worldwide toll.
Our remaining time in Arras was spent visiting the Wellington Quarries (an underground city dug by New Zealand sappers to house 24,000 soldiers) and Les Boves, an underground system under Arras that sheltered the civilian population.
Our transport to and from the Vimy Memorial was with Michel from RMB Transports (www.rmb-transports.com). More than just a taxi service, Michel provided interesting commentary along the way. Michel lives in Thélus, a village destroyed during the Battle of Vimy Ridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vimy_Ridge) and then rebuilt.
See an album of selected pictures at: www.flickr.com/photos/100countries/albums/72177720309789434
