Depeche Mode

Tonight I saw Depeche Mode in the Arras town square (with about 25,000 other people), fulfilling a 6 year dream. Gee, that doesn't sound as impressive as a LIFELONG dream, but it was still a good time. Here you can pretty much see as much as I could.

Though all the cobblestone streets in Europe sure look nice and quaint for the visitors, they really aren't ideal for dancing in place. A very uneven surface below the feet makes this quite difficult.

Nevertheless, this did not stop me from grooving along with the boys of DM. Despite the crowds, poor sight lines, and cobblestones, it was all worth it just to hear "Personal Jesus" live in concert. Made me quite nostalgic for my "rave days." Oh dear, how fun it would be to dance the night away again. But alas, my advanced years require that I turn in at a decent hour these days! It was a beautiful night, not too hot or too cold, the stage was huge and the light show perfectly enhanced the strong beats making it a gorgeous time to be rocking-out in France. What more can a girl ask for? Oh yeah, maybe a couple more hours sleep!

London

Naomi is getting very good at the sellf-portrait. Self portrait: in London.

London makes me want an iPod. Everyone in London has one! So it's decided, I'm going to buy an iPod, move to London and start dressing snappier.

That handy-dandy Channel tunnel makes a quick trip to London so easy! I was able to scoot over one evening after work and spend two nights and two days visiting the Queen.

It was actually a bit of a relief to be back in a land where English is the main language. I didn't have to worry about my accent being understood everytime I opened my mouth. Oh, and I must say, I didn't mind having Starbucks around again either...I know, it's shameful.

I visited St. Paul's Cathedral and enjoyed it immensely. Unlike many of the cathedrals in France, you are not allowed to take pictures there and I think that's a great thing. First of all, it seems to help people remember that they are in a place of worship. Not having flash bulbs going off everywhere helps to maintain a more reverent atmosphere. Secondly, visitors there actually seemed to be looking at things (imagine!) and taking them in first hand, rather than experiencing everything through the tiny screen on their digital cameras.

I also took in choral Evensong at the Cathedral which was very enjoyable.

Other than that, I did a lot of wandering about, visited a market, and went for sushi. At YoSushi! you sit at a bar in front of this conveyor belt on which different plates of sushi and the like move by in front of you. When you see something you like, you grab it and chow down. When you see something on the menu that's not coming by on the belt, you press a button and a waiter comes to take your order. It was the most entertainment I've had eating dinner in a while. Ah the things you find in the big city!


I also visited the Imperial War Museum in order to browse their First World War exhibit. It was very well done.






Here are some signs taken out of the trenches.








Before heading "home" I found a book store and stocked up on enough English books to get me through the rest of the summer, and some food stuffs not readily available in France.

I must be settling into life in France; I kept mentally converting Pounds to Euros rather than Canadian Dollars! Then just when I had gotten used to looking right before crossing the road, it was time to head back accross the Channel.

Stories

I gave a tour to this British man the other day who told me an interesting story. His grandfather had fought with the British at Vimy during WWI (this was early in 1916 before the Canadians were on the scene). At one point he was wounded by shellfire and stranded out in no-man's land; when a German soldier happened upon him he thought for sure that would be the end. Instead, the German, finding no one else around, picked him up and carried him back to a Red Cross medical station. The British gave the German soldier some tea, and he spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. Apparently these two soldiers stayed in touch after the war and wrote letters to one another quite frequently. At one point they even met again in person, but sometime in the 30s they lost touch and this man's grandfather never ended up hearing from him again.

Today at work we were having a discussion about how everyone really did have a different experience in war. Some never saw the front, some were shell-shocked, some enjoyed the deep sense on camaraderie. Every experience was different. I'm reading Forgotten Voices of the Great War (by Max Arthur) right now, a compilation of excerpts from interviews with survivors of that war. Some stories are really fond memories of times during war; lighthearted descriptions of sniping on the "jerries." Other recollections can be much more gruesome, like being on burial duty, which consisted of crouching around in no-man's land at night trying to recuperate the bodies of fallen soldiers, sometimes after they'd been lying there for weeks. I can't even imagine.

It's quite a common thing to meet British (and sometimes Canadian) visitors who are re-tracing the movements of their relatives who served during the Great War, visiting battlefields where they fought, and sometimes died. These people have often done quite a bit of research, and gathered a great deal of information. I have yet to meet a French person who is doing this sort of thing and I'm not quite sure why. At Vimy, the French had been holding that part of the front line since the start of the war, until the British arrived in 1916. They lost an incredible number of men defending their country, and so I'm not quite sure why you never seem to meet relatives of those veterans.

Thoughts on war

In the last two months I have learned much about the first world war. I've been taught about it, read about it, listened to talks about it, and visited its battlefields. What I have enjoyed most about all of this learning are the new perspectives on what that war was like for the people of the time and for the "average" soldier.

On a couple of occasions, us guides have been bribed with a free dinner in return for our presence at presentations given at a British-owned B and B near the Newfoundland Memorial site (or, NewFOUNDland Park, as the British like to call it) in the Somme.

The first such presentation was on the subject of the German army in the Great War. Impressed upon us was the fact that the German army was a highly efficient, professional army, a very formidable enemy, which is, in part, why most of that war was spent in deadlock and lasted so long.

Coming from a country that was part of the Allied forces, it's easy to forget that the experience of the German people in that war would not have been all that different from that of our own people. What I particularly took away from that presentation was the point that after the war, Germany was given so very little land on which to bury their dead. This is why in many German cemetaries of the First World War you'll find mass graves. In fact, for unknown reasons, a much higher percentage of German soldiers just simply dissappeared without a trace.

The presenter ended the presentation by reading a translated version of a German poem that talked about the fact that mothers and wives and sisters of men lost during that war had absolutely no place to mourn. The war was fought in another land and with so many missing, they were left with absolutely nowhere to mourn their dead. No graves, no monuments, nothing. I've done a completely inadequate job of expressing it here, but it left quite an impression on me. When the politicians were done waging that war, the people of all countries were left equally devastated.

Last week we attended another presentation at "Avril's" (the name of the British woman who owns the B and B). It was a gorgeous evening on the Somme and we had dinner out in the garden. As usual, there were many British guests, many military, and on this particular evening, a contingent of Germans. When everyone had settled-in with their dessert, coffee, and/or other beverage, we enjoyed a presentation on the experience of the average soldier of the first world war. Because of all the German guests, the presentation was translated which, though making it quite a bit longer, was quite interesting because I got to see how many German words I could recognize!

Here are some of the more interesting points of this presentation:
-not all soldiers of the Great War were "boys" of 16, 17, and 18 years of age. The average age is probably a lot higher than you'd expect. All you have to do is roam through a war cemetary around here to see all sorts men from their late 20s into their 30s buried there. The fact that you may see so many young ones in the cemetaries was part of the harsh reality that the younger, less experienced ones were most likely to die.
-soldiers probably only spent from 10-25% of their time in the trenches and only about 20-some days in actual "battle." The rest of their time was spent in the rear areas on work crews, or on leave.
-half of those serving in the war were not infantry in the trenches. Armies need drivers and paramedics and bottlewashers and paper-pushers and all sorts of people other than soldiers on the ground in order to operate. Lots of those who served never saw battle or the trenches.
-lots of British came to Canada to enlist with the Canadian Corps because they'd be paid better than had they joined in Britain!
-Most people who went off to war came back. This is a vast generalization, but about 10% of those who went off to war never came back (though this figure fluxuates depending on the country).

These points were not raised in order to trivialize the experience of those men who served in that war, but rather to help us put things into perspective. We have such a tendency to look back on that time in history and think that there was "one experience" of those in war, when in fact, everyone's experience was different. We often think that it was off to war and then they sat in the muddy trenches for 4 long years. Again, I'm not trying to say that life for these men was fine and dandy, but rather that we tend to get a very warped view of things when we look back on history.

And certainly, the death toll was staggering for the time, and the fact that most men returned did not change the pain felt by those affected by the deaths of the 10% that did not make it. But at Vimy, for example, we'll get a lot of visitors who walk through the trenches and then pause thoughtfully and say something like: "think of the hundreds of thousands (or sometimes millions) who died here." We gently point out the fact that just under 4000 Canadian men died in the attack at Vimy, and that, within the context of war, that was actually not so bad. While the victory certainly came at great cost, the battle at Vimy was not a slaughter like the opening day of the battle of the Somme.

Don't even get me started on those popular views that the generals had no regard for human life and were just sitting in the rear areas having a lovely cup of tea, or that war was waged haphazardly. I've heard some very convincing arguments for the fact that war was complex and that it wasn't as simple as just deciding not to go to war. But like I said, don't get me started. Or if you're interested, you can get me started about it sometime, I'd love to talk your ear off. But for now, I'm rambling so I'll stop.

La vie est belle

I've started to settle into life in France. Or at least food in France.

I've been doing my best to enjoy all of those cliche French things. We don't have to leave for work until just after 9am everyday, so it's easy (even for someone like me who is NOT a morning person) to step out in the morning to grab a baguette or a croissant from a bakery. Luckily there are no bakeries in the immediate area, so I have to walk at least five minutes to go grab decadent treats. This dissuades me from doing it EVERY morning.

Here in Arras there is a market Wednesday and Saturday mornings, so I've been trying to step out early to grab some good produce there. I'll never forget the first morning I walked up to the market, the sound of a rooster crowing greeted me as I approached the packed square; there was poultry of various kinds being sold right out of their cages.

Of course it's France, so any old grocery store has a very decent selection of cheese and wine (for cheap!).

The other day I went out for dinner with a couple of roommates. We ate at a very hip restaurant. It was quite small and had a constant stream of patrons coming and going, indicating that it must be of some quality. Indeed it was. The selection on the menu was an array of various fusion dishes, and while nothing was particularly French about it, (other than the fact that the food was great) we did start the meal with an "aperitif." Oh, and we finished with a "cafe creme."

Oh, and we had appetizers at home before going to the restaurant. What did we have? Escargots.

For Mom

Since I don't know what most of these flowers are, I thought I'd post a few so that Mom can see the flowers in the cemetaries right now.

Cemetaries

It's impossible to drive through Northern France without passing numerous war cemetaries. The rows upon rows of tombstones are a stark reminder of the wars that passed through this region. Many of these are British or Commonwealth cemetaries, like this one on the Vimy Memorial site:
Here is a French cemetary:
And a German:
This particular cemetary is huge and rather eerie. Most of these crosses mark 4 burials. There is also a mass grave here. Notice the different markers used for Jewish soldiers:
Commonwealth cemetaries are maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). CWGC cemetaries are by far the most well maintained. For every burial, about $90 (Can) a year is spent on maintenance. You'll always find the grass perfectly manicured and the headstones and plants surrounding them impeccably groomed. These cemetaries are meant to have the feel of a peaceful English garden. The CWGC has detailed records of every known burial of Commonwealth soldiers throughout the world.

From time to time a soldier may have been buried alone in a local town cemetary. The CWGC maintains these graves as well. If you visit one of these, despite the fact that the rest of the cemetary may be completely dillapidated, you'll find a path mown through the grass right up to that plot and the tiny patch of ground around that one grave as carefully groomed as those in the war cemetaries. The care that the CWGC puts into maintaining these graves and cemetaries is phenomenol.
Some inscriptions:


The cross in the picture at the top of this post is known as a "cross of sacrifice." Every CWGC cemetary has one; there are 4 different sizes based on the number of burials in that cemetary.

In the "absence" of the memorial, the cemetaries are quickly becoming my favorite area on the site. Whether it's raining or sunny, they are so beautiful and peaceful. Standing around saying "bonjour hello" to people gets old really fast and it becomes very easy to forget what we are there to commemorate. Spending time wandering around one of the cemetaries really helps to remind me of the overwhelming events that took place there 90 years ago.