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Military keyword > destroyed > Turning south from there I came to what seemed to me the saddest and most disturbing place of all. The German Cemetery at La Camba. In the centre, on top of a large grassy mound, surrounded by red roses stand two shrouded figures.
Military keyword > destroyed > Normandy Memoirs...A Personal Reflction photo
Military keyword > destroyed > Beyond these are dark, tangled woods surrounded by yellow ropes strung between red signs "Danger Entre Interdit Munitions Non EclatÚe" (undetonated explosives). The sun was low and cast long shadows. I found myself left alone by the living. Yet behind the wind in the trees, faintly, I thought I could hear desperate cries and curses of men who had died for the promise of peace and found that the price they paid had brought only a lull. Millions more were to bleed and die. In the cemetery their stones stand Forever at attention Ridged in the setting sun. I wonder How is it that I can leave and they cannot? That night in the "Hotel du Golf" I was introduced to the French mosquito. There were no window screens or air conditioning (the norm in France). I passed the night waging war against these miniature foes dive bombing my ear. Another round in the eternal battle between "us" and "them!" My one satisfaction was adding to the already numerous record of Mosquito kills marked in blood on the walls. The next day I drove out to the coast, and travelled from World War I to II. I stopped at the towering chalk cliffs of Cape Gris, a mere 18 km from England. Their mirror image, the "white cliffs of Dover" were visible in the faint haze separating the light blue sky from the darker sea. Because of this, Cape Gris was an important observation post for the Nazis. Masters of reinforced concrete, they had built several observation bunkers on and into the cliff connected by a warren of tunnels that still survive. I realised I was hungry and lunch was in order. I sat on top of one of the bunkers, ate my jambon et fromage baguette and drank a glass of superb French wine. In the warmth of the sun, the sight of gulls hovering over the edge of the white cliffs, and the taste of good food, I was filled with the joie de vivre one expects from a holiday in France. After lunch I wandered over to one of the tunnel entrances. It was overgrown with brush, and smelled like a latrine (which is just what many tourists used them for). The tunnels beyond were impenetrably dark. The beam of my little key-chain flashlight seemed to be smothered, as if there was more to the darkness here than just the lack of light. My return from the tunnel into the sun dispelled most of my fear, but I was left with a sense that the evil I had felt was not dead, only biding its time.
Military keyword > destroyed > View of Dieppe beach from the German gun positions. The truth is that Stalin was threatening to sue for peace with Hitler on the verge of taking Moscow, Stalingrad, and Leningrad. Not only that but Roosevelt did not like Churchill's plan to go to North Africa first. He wanted to take on Hitler in France right away. Churchill gave Mountbatten the job of mounting a mini invasion.... AND PROVE IT COULD NOT BE DONE YET. (source Gen. Denis Whitaker in his book Dieppe Tragedy to Triumph) So the bombing of the guns by Bomber Harris was called off at the last minute, no battle ship was sent to provide fire support and the Canadians were slaughtered.
Military keyword > destroyed > Beyond these are, tangled woods surrounded by yellow ropes strung between red signs "Danger Entre Interdit Munitions Non EclatÚe" (undetonated explosives).
Military keyword > destroyed > Normandy Memoirs...A Personal Reflction photo
Military keyword > destroyed > The Grange tunnel. Part of a vast maze of tunnels built to protect the soldiers from the "toxic" open fields. Eighty two years ago on this ridge, on Easter Monday, April 9, 1917 there was no peace, no leaves, no grass, no memorial, only ceaseless noise, unending mud (tilled by countless artillery shells) swallowing the bodies of thousands of nameless men. Four divisions -one hundred thousand Canadians- men and boys, many as young as sixteen, fought together for the first time as a distinct army corps. Here 20,000 soldiers, marching behind a "creeping artillery barrage" from 1079 guns rose out of their tunnels and trenches and launched into the north-west wind that swept the devastated countryside with sleet, snow and machine gun fire. Three days later they emerged, having accomplished what the French, with one hundred and fifty thousand casualties over three years had failed, to achieve. They had taken Vimy Ridge. Of the 10,602 casualties, 3,598 were young Canadians. They would never in the words of John McCrae, "feel dawn or see sunset glow" again. Many claim that this battle marked the end of our country's adolescence. This was the place where we earned the right to play at war with the bigger, older boys. In recognition, the French government gave the land to Canada and has recognised it as Canadian soil. When I read this I thought: so now we own a piece of French real estate, the price, only sixty six thousand Canadian lives, a bargain at the time. I put my hand on some of the names engraved on the monument, the ones whose bodies disappeared in the mud without a trace, and felt chagrin replace my earlier feelings of pride. Pride would have meant I had a right to glory in the suffering, pain, the fear and death of these Canadians who willingly or not, lost their lives defending their King and his British empire.
Military keyword > destroyed > Behind the memorial the battlefield has been preserved. The mud is gone. The trenches are lined with cement "sand bags." The tunnels and the great craters, some more than thirty metres across, named after Canadian cities (Montreal, Winnipeg) are now covered in grass.
Military keyword > destroyed > Sheep are used to crop the grass as it is too dangerous for humans to do it.
Turning south from there I came to what seemed to me the saddest and most disturbing place of all. The German Cemetery at La Camba. In the centre, on top of a large grassy mound, surrounded by red roses stand two shrouded figures.
> Turning south from there I came to what seemed to me the saddest and most disturbing place of all. The German Cemetery at La Camba. In the centre, on top of a large grassy mound, surrounded by red roses stand two shrouded figures.
Turning south from there I came to what seemed to me the saddest and most disturbing place of all. The German Cemetery at La Camba. In the centre, on top of a large grassy mound, surrounded by red roses stand two shrouded figures.
Photo by: ImagesOfTheJourney · see photo in gallery
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