You get some sense of the scale of the enormity of it all when you walk through the cemeteries of Northern France. Row after row of white headstones and crosses, or the black ones of the German Cemeteries, interspersed with the headstones with the Star of David on them, or the large section of Muslim ones in the French Cemeteries. It is easy for them all to blur together, to be overwhelmed by the numbers, 9 million dead, 66,000 Canadian dead. Almost 6,000 (mostly) young men a day for over four years, 20,000 British dead in one day alone, most of them falling in the first two hours of July 1, 1916.
But each headstone, every cross, lies over someone's life story. Many of the stories will never be told, for they were mostly single and of course they didn't survive to answer the pestering questions of a grandson or daughter who doesn't know any better.
But more and more, as I delve into the lives of some of these men, I'm struck by their stories. The brothers who stood in line together to sign up, only to die far from the home and the life they grew up in. There were two sets alone from the area I grew up in.
Many people know the story of George Price, the Canadian who was, in all probability, the last Allied soldier to die in the Great War. At 10:58 in the morning he was struck by a sniper's bullet, two minutes before all hostilities were to cease. He lies buried in Mons Belgium, mere yards from the first British soldier to die in that war.
But last week I heard a Veteran on a recording to tell of an event more poignant death that day, a man in his unit struck down mere moments before Price. The difference? This fellow was one of the original Canadians, a man who had survived the entire war, but a curious man, who stuck his head up to have a look around shorty before the guns fell silent, only to be hit by a sniper's bullet and fall into the Canal where they were holding the line.
But one of the most poignant stories I've come across is that of Duncan Patterson, another old original, and one of the first men to die in my Grandfather's regiment (long before my Grandfather got to France). Duncan immigrated to Canada a couple of years before the war, hoping to make a better life for his wife and six children, who he left behind until he could earn enough money to bring them across.
He worked as stone mason on the legislature in Winnipeg, but it took him two years to earn enough money for passage across for Mary and his children. By that time the rumblings of war were happening in Europe and when it broke out Patterson, a veteran, signed up.
As his ship was leaving for England, Mary and the children's ship was arriving in Canada. The two ships met in the St Lawrence, literally two ships passing in the night. As they passed Duncan called out "Mary, is that you?" and she replied "Duncan?". With his reply of "Yes" the ships sailed apart. She and the children headed to a new life in a new country. He sailed on to meet a sniper's bullet in Belgium, some four months later.
Comments
2 responses
Kia ora Clare,
Thank you for keeping these histories alive. May we never forget.
It is pretty hard to get my head around those numbers of dead. What was lost to the world? The art, music, literature, discoveries never made. And it still carries on.
You have an astute way with writing history. Cheers Clare.
Robb
Thanks Robb, it is a part of my writing which doesn’t seem to generate a lot of interest but which is very important to me. Lately my interests have gravitated a lot to the study. I’m trying to interest my film making cousins in a documentary about Grandpa’s war and our discovery of more about it.