Montsec and Vimy Monuments: Poignant Remembrances

Maybe it was because France doesn’t have a Basel (where autobahns are devoured then regurgitated up into endless strands of tunnels, overpasses, bypasses and detours), or maybe it was because it was familiar.  Then again, maybe it was because it was the last stepping-stone before going home, or maybe it was because the countryside began to overwhelm the view once again. Whatever it was, my partner and I wanted to kiss the earth within metres of crossing into France from Switzerland.

Le Clos Mirabelle

We waited until Commercy, or to be more exact, Woinville – a village 10 kms deeper into rural France – to get out of the car to do this however. At a four-cornered village with a dominating church and a 200-year-old chateau with sweeping lawn and gardens and large pink floral rooms that overlooked a carriage house and fields stretching to a green and forested horizon. If checking into this chateau (Le Clos Mirabelle) wasn’t enough to convince us that we had found paradise, the Michelin-rated restaurant and meal in nearby village that night, the non-juried opportunity to speak French with the proprietor, and the discovery of the history that the area had overcome, did.

Montsec, Meuse

A hilltop alit with what looked like a Roman temple first alerted us to what may have been the reality of these green fields 100 years ago – namely, a World War I battle site. A trip to the temple the next morning confirmed this: it was a monument/shrine (Delphi-like in design) erected by the U.S. Government to honour those 550,000 soldiers who had fought to liberate France and undo Germany’s hold of the eastern frontier of France in the last months of the First World War.  It became an area once again snared by war and artillery during the Second World War. How humbling to realize we were in the heart of the Verdun area and the most intense fighting of World War II.

Vimy Ridge

And, four hours later, we were in The Somme, heart of the most intense battle arenas of World War I in north-east France. Here the largest monument in the area – on Vimy Ridge – stands to honour the Canadians who had died to help liberate France one hundred years ago. Spacious, spare, the site is now a green haven for sheep, silence, and here and there clusters of wide-ranging admirers; joggers, veterans, historians, nationalists and somber groups of visiting European schoolchildren. An oasis in the middle of a busy corner in France, visitors to the site travel kilometres through quiet forests and tree-lined avenues before reaching the commemorative sites in Vimy – the memorial, the gravesites, the visitor’s centre, the trenches and tunnels.

Vimy Monument and Surroundings

The memorial is strikingly large and luminescent and its statues somehow catholic in style and themes (one named, for instance, “The Sorrow of Sacrifice”). A spirit of sobriety and reflectiveness pervades all of the sites, from the beautifully maintained cemetery with its rows of white crosses in furrows of flowers, to the Visitor’s Information Centre (true to its name – no Cokes and souvenirs here!) and steps beyond, to the remnants of each forces’ trenches – metres and craters apart – and the warren of underground tunnels that had served them. Descending into these tunnels, one can feel the tensions, the deprivations, and ultimately, the esprit du corps that had underlain life in this pre-Vimy front.

One leaves Vimy with increased abhorrence for those who had started the war, and immeasurable awe for the people who had done their bidding.