Vimy
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Vimy Day
From one o'clock until five thirty, thousands of men – quiet. The locking ring on our bayonets were a little loose. When the order to "Fix bayonets" went along the line, you'd think there were a thousand bees coming. You trembled, waiting. — F. MacGregor, 25th Battalion CEF Today has been named Vimy Ridge Day
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The big scrap
France, April 12, 1917 Dear Home Folks:- Just a few lines on this my birthday to let you know I came through the big scrap OK. I haven't time to write much but just want to say how glad I am. Louis came through alright too. Dan Holmes was wounded + I think Stewart McNicol
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Ghosts in the rain
There was a moment, last year in France, that I imagined my Grandpa standing near me, not as a young soldier, but as the man I knew, a man revisiting a place filled with ghosts from his youth. Forty years ago he returned to Vimy, fifty-one years after the battle that must have been a
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Fields of Graves
It is almost impossible to put into words just how many graves there are in the area around Vimy. I’d like to be able to tell you of the emotions that course through you after visiting graveyard after graveyard after graveyard, filled with young men, but I can’t. Nine Elms cemetery was the first cemetery