”Gunners Return to Vimy” April 10, 2017
Dear all,
This my last report from our Gunner tour. I'm on my way to Portugal and then back to Sally and home on April 19th.
The culmination of our tour was yesterday's ceremony at Vimy Ridge. Many of you have seen the televised coverage so I will stick to some of my recent experiences that were not on TV.
Our Vimy Ridge Sunday morning began with a very leisurely buffet breakfast enjoyed at the Novotel in central Lille. We were to board our bus at 10am so we had plenty of time to chat with other Gunners, spouses and friends of Gunners.
Our oldest participant for the past eight days was a retired Airborne Gunner who began parachuting from RCAF planes in 1947 and still keeps up with the rest of us (on foot). Our youngest "Gunner" was the 5 year old son of a Gunner (perhaps a son of a gun?). For special parades, when our serving Gunners were in uniform and medals, he would don his khaki Canadian WWI replica uniform and become the most photographed soldier within a five kilometre radius.
It would be an absolute understatement to say that the week on tour was a bonding event; because it was far, far more than that. Renewing friendships, revisiting shared experiences from tens of years ago, meeting new friends and reviewing some artillery skills and principles that, especially for we retired folks, were fading from our memory and from our "kit-bags of experience". Such as "2 o'clock, middle distance, red barn, go right 30 mils (aka one finger width of your extended arm), grey bunker". "Seen."
It is an interesting experience to stand on the edge of a particular Canadian battlefield and discuss the WWI and WWII use of our artillery. (Well, perhaps not for a number of you.) It is particularly interesting when the discussion involves several Master Gunners, some Instructors in Gunnery, two retired Lieutenant-Generals (both Gunners), some young, tech-savvy, Captains and Sergeants with Afghanistan experience and quite a few experienced, and very well-read, additional participants.
The battlefield analysis and debate was quite dramatically interrupted one afternoon when one of the spouses on the tour saw something interesting in the nearby freshly-plowed soil. She reached down and lifted up a rusty and nearly complete 18 pounder shrapnel shell (projectile). The shrapnel "balls" had definitely been blown out of the metal shell casing and it was certainly safe. However, taking it home on an airplane might be problematic and might even arouse additional concern that it could still contain dirt from a farm. It would also add 10+ pounds to one's already heavy luggage. (And, for any Gunners that may he reading this, I will properly describe the projectile as "spherical case shot".)
Sadly, it is a moving and tragic experience to walk into any of the thousands of WWI cemeteries in Europe and read the names of the fallen of so many nations. We are still affected by the unimaginable violence of that war and we continue to seek ways of ensuring enduring peace. In the words of our Governor General yesterday, "Without freedom, there can be no peace. Because freedom without peace is agony, and peace without freedom is slavery."
So, all of us on the tour, while on the bus and while walking the ground, were usually thinking about much more than baguettes and beer.
Our bus, one of two Canadian Gunner buses, had cross-Canada representation from Victoria to Yarmouth, NS. Collectively, the serving and retired Gunners aboard "Gunner1" had 939 years of service in uniform. The "Gunner 2" bus was predominantly younger serving Gunners from Regular and Reserve units across Canada. We joked that our "Gunner 1" bus included a large recycling barrel for used hearing aid batteries.
Lunch was delivered every day to whichever historic site the bus had stopped at during the middle of the day. One day we ate in the bus because it was windy and chilly outside but most days we enjoyed a picnic nearby. Temperatures were generally in the low 20s C, and unseasonably warm. Lunch (for the gourmets among you) was bottled water, chips, fruit, a dessert and the inevitable baguette: filled with great local cheese and meat, sometimes some greens, as well as butter and a side packet of mayonnaise. These rations could be supplemented with freeze dried coffee and boiling hot water from the bus hot beverage bar. Some of us also chose to buy soft drinks, or even beer, from the iced cooler maintained by our excellent and friendly Netherlands driver. And some of us had enough foresight to purchase a little bottle of wine from Carrefour the night before. So, which wine pairs well with a fresh baguette? Winning answer: - any wine.
And what about beer? We only scratched the surface of the hundreds of beers available in France and Belgium, especially the latter. The personal favourites of my room-mate Craig Cotter and I were Affligem from Belgium and Pelforth Brune from France.
The Canadian tour company is called, as you might guess "Fields of Fire Tours" and I highly recommend them as a Flanders, Normandy, Italy tour company. One can certainly visit these areas with a guidebook in hand but the presence of an experienced military guide makes a significant difference if the main purpose of the visit is military history.
We frequently met other visitors at memorials, cemeteries, museums and battlefield sites. The experiences were always interesting, educational and sometimes very touching and emotional. There are many more Canadian visitor this year than usual , largely a result of Vimy 100. We met school groups from across Canada, family groups and many individuals. In a new museum, very near Notre-Dame-de-Lorette cemetery and ossuaries, I came across a French high school teacher and her class in a three-walled museum classroom; each student at a terminal and researching one French soldier among the thousands whose names and records are now on a database.
In Thelus (on Saturday) as we marched from town hall to the Canadian Artillery Memorial I saw a familiar retired soldier among the people on the sidewalk; he is a Gunner I had served with in the 1970s. After the ceremony we talked for a while and I asked if he was coming back to the town hall for the reception. "No", he replied "a taxi is picking me up here at 4 and I'm going to visit an uncle." I asked if his uncle lived nearby and he said "He is about ten kilometres away and our family have been visiting him since 1921."
Some fellow Canadians we met had used the Library and Archives Canada website to view a relative's WWI complete file (just look for "Canadian CEF Soldiers" on a search engine, find the soldier and download the PDF file). It does take several minutes for the PDF file to download, so be patient. The 600,000+ files are being made available in alphabetical order this year and I think that the A - N surnames are now online.
Some visitors had brought a relative's medals or identity disks (aka "dog tags") with them, others had the cap badge or the collar badge of a particular Canadian CEF battalion or corps or unit. By the way, almost every Canadian infantry battalion capbadge features a maple leaf or leaves, as do many other corps or branch badges. The maple leaf is prominent on every Canadian headstone, and the headstones are regularly cleaned, and replaced if necessary. All of this is the responsibility of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Canada is a member and a contributor.
Most visitors had poppies to wear, or to place in a special location. Many had small Canadian flags on sticks for the same purpose, or to place at a Canadian grave. The grave of Canada's Unknown Soldier has a special headstone in Cabaret Rouge Cemetery near Vimy Ridge. It is easily identified from a distance because of the dozens of little Canadian flags placed beside it.
The actual remains of our Unknown Soldier were transferred in 2000 from France to a tomb at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. Poppies are often added to the tomb by visitors, especially on November 11th. The original Cabaret Rouge headstone is in the Canadian War Museum, in Ottawa, in a quiet room of Remembrance. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the sun shines through a window and illuminates the headstone of:
A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR
A CANADIAN REGIMENT
KNOWN UNTO GOD
I began by describing yesterday morning when we drove to Vimy Ridge, so I should continue and finish this report. Our bus dropped us several kilometres from the memorial and we walked along with thousands of others in snaking lines reminiscent of airports, stadiums, museums, cathedrals and theme parks. From time to time many of us had the happy experience of encountering a friend or neighbour in the adjacent snaking line, and often it was someone we actually thought was back home in Canada. The "shuttle shuffle" carried us through the security checkpoint and on to the shuttle buses that took us several kilometres to Vimy Ridge. On arrival, large crowds left the shuttle buses and moved in a very orderly (but slow) manner to the plateau-like ridge top that 100 years ago was traversed by thousands of other Canadians in khaki. By 3:00pm every visitor had a chair, a sitting place on the grass or a place to stand. It was hot and the water stations were well used.
The ceremony began, the speeches and narratives were poignant and thought provoking and the soldiers and performers were professional and evocative. The Gunners, of course, fired their guns; and for only a few moments in our own lives the smell of cordite drifted across the ridge. Then, with the singing of the national anthems, the ceremony came to an end and the challenge of getting tens of thousands of spectators back to the shuttle buses began.
There was very little grumbling and most people accepted the reality of the slow dispersion of the crowd and often used it as an opportunity to chat with other participants. The first comments were often about the event and which aspects people liked the most. Weather was often an opening topic, mainly because most of the crowd were Canadians. Conversations moved to where we each live and to why we were each there at Vimy.
I met an extended family from New Brunswick, New Jersey and Ontario who had recently visited a particular grave. A nearby gentleman from Toronto turned out to be a former teacher and vice principal. From his pocket he produced an aluminum First War identity disk and told me about his grandfather and added a great deal about the CEF battalion in which he had served. He had visited his grave earlier in the week.
As we inched toward the shuttle buses a soon-to-be-retired Westjet pilot (who is also an N-scale railway enthusiast in Edmonton) and I talked about the impact of both World Wars on Canada and on all Canadians. We even discussed the dozen or so WWI Canadian CEF railway battalions and the memorial bronze statue of a soldier and an angel in front of the old CPR station in downtown Vancouver.
The steady hum of conversation among family, friends and complete strangers was frequently interrupted by thousands of spontaneous Canadian school kids loudly and proudly singing "O Canada". By 9pm we were back on "Gunner1" and heading back to Lille.
Perhaps in 1918 and 1919 our returning CEF soldiers had good reason to bemoan (and whinge about) the days and months it took for them to return home to Canada, to families and to friends. Sadly, thousands of their comrades were never able to join them for that journey home. We will remember them.
Stu
Dear all,
This my last report from our Gunner tour. I'm on my way to Portugal and then back to Sally and home on April 19th.
The culmination of our tour was yesterday's ceremony at Vimy Ridge. Many of you have seen the televised coverage so I will stick to some of my recent experiences that were not on TV.
Our Vimy Ridge Sunday morning began with a very leisurely buffet breakfast enjoyed at the Novotel in central Lille. We were to board our bus at 10am so we had plenty of time to chat with other Gunners, spouses and friends of Gunners.
Our oldest participant for the past eight days was a retired Airborne Gunner who began parachuting from RCAF planes in 1947 and still keeps up with the rest of us (on foot). Our youngest "Gunner" was the 5 year old son of a Gunner (perhaps a son of a gun?). For special parades, when our serving Gunners were in uniform and medals, he would don his khaki Canadian WWI replica uniform and become the most photographed soldier within a five kilometre radius.
It would be an absolute understatement to say that the week on tour was a bonding event; because it was far, far more than that. Renewing friendships, revisiting shared experiences from tens of years ago, meeting new friends and reviewing some artillery skills and principles that, especially for we retired folks, were fading from our memory and from our "kit-bags of experience". Such as "2 o'clock, middle distance, red barn, go right 30 mils (aka one finger width of your extended arm), grey bunker". "Seen."
It is an interesting experience to stand on the edge of a particular Canadian battlefield and discuss the WWI and WWII use of our artillery. (Well, perhaps not for a number of you.) It is particularly interesting when the discussion involves several Master Gunners, some Instructors in Gunnery, two retired Lieutenant-Generals (both Gunners), some young, tech-savvy, Captains and Sergeants with Afghanistan experience and quite a few experienced, and very well-read, additional participants.
The battlefield analysis and debate was quite dramatically interrupted one afternoon when one of the spouses on the tour saw something interesting in the nearby freshly-plowed soil. She reached down and lifted up a rusty and nearly complete 18 pounder shrapnel shell (projectile). The shrapnel "balls" had definitely been blown out of the metal shell casing and it was certainly safe. However, taking it home on an airplane might be problematic and might even arouse additional concern that it could still contain dirt from a farm. It would also add 10+ pounds to one's already heavy luggage. (And, for any Gunners that may he reading this, I will properly describe the projectile as "spherical case shot".)
Sadly, it is a moving and tragic experience to walk into any of the thousands of WWI cemeteries in Europe and read the names of the fallen of so many nations. We are still affected by the unimaginable violence of that war and we continue to seek ways of ensuring enduring peace. In the words of our Governor General yesterday, "Without freedom, there can be no peace. Because freedom without peace is agony, and peace without freedom is slavery."
So, all of us on the tour, while on the bus and while walking the ground, were usually thinking about much more than baguettes and beer.
Our bus, one of two Canadian Gunner buses, had cross-Canada representation from Victoria to Yarmouth, NS. Collectively, the serving and retired Gunners aboard "Gunner1" had 939 years of service in uniform. The "Gunner 2" bus was predominantly younger serving Gunners from Regular and Reserve units across Canada. We joked that our "Gunner 1" bus included a large recycling barrel for used hearing aid batteries.
Lunch was delivered every day to whichever historic site the bus had stopped at during the middle of the day. One day we ate in the bus because it was windy and chilly outside but most days we enjoyed a picnic nearby. Temperatures were generally in the low 20s C, and unseasonably warm. Lunch (for the gourmets among you) was bottled water, chips, fruit, a dessert and the inevitable baguette: filled with great local cheese and meat, sometimes some greens, as well as butter and a side packet of mayonnaise. These rations could be supplemented with freeze dried coffee and boiling hot water from the bus hot beverage bar. Some of us also chose to buy soft drinks, or even beer, from the iced cooler maintained by our excellent and friendly Netherlands driver. And some of us had enough foresight to purchase a little bottle of wine from Carrefour the night before. So, which wine pairs well with a fresh baguette? Winning answer: - any wine.
And what about beer? We only scratched the surface of the hundreds of beers available in France and Belgium, especially the latter. The personal favourites of my room-mate Craig Cotter and I were Affligem from Belgium and Pelforth Brune from France.
The Canadian tour company is called, as you might guess "Fields of Fire Tours" and I highly recommend them as a Flanders, Normandy, Italy tour company. One can certainly visit these areas with a guidebook in hand but the presence of an experienced military guide makes a significant difference if the main purpose of the visit is military history.
We frequently met other visitors at memorials, cemeteries, museums and battlefield sites. The experiences were always interesting, educational and sometimes very touching and emotional. There are many more Canadian visitor this year than usual , largely a result of Vimy 100. We met school groups from across Canada, family groups and many individuals. In a new museum, very near Notre-Dame-de-Lorette cemetery and ossuaries, I came across a French high school teacher and her class in a three-walled museum classroom; each student at a terminal and researching one French soldier among the thousands whose names and records are now on a database.
In Thelus (on Saturday) as we marched from town hall to the Canadian Artillery Memorial I saw a familiar retired soldier among the people on the sidewalk; he is a Gunner I had served with in the 1970s. After the ceremony we talked for a while and I asked if he was coming back to the town hall for the reception. "No", he replied "a taxi is picking me up here at 4 and I'm going to visit an uncle." I asked if his uncle lived nearby and he said "He is about ten kilometres away and our family have been visiting him since 1921."
Some fellow Canadians we met had used the Library and Archives Canada website to view a relative's WWI complete file (just look for "Canadian CEF Soldiers" on a search engine, find the soldier and download the PDF file). It does take several minutes for the PDF file to download, so be patient. The 600,000+ files are being made available in alphabetical order this year and I think that the A - N surnames are now online.
Some visitors had brought a relative's medals or identity disks (aka "dog tags") with them, others had the cap badge or the collar badge of a particular Canadian CEF battalion or corps or unit. By the way, almost every Canadian infantry battalion capbadge features a maple leaf or leaves, as do many other corps or branch badges. The maple leaf is prominent on every Canadian headstone, and the headstones are regularly cleaned, and replaced if necessary. All of this is the responsibility of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Canada is a member and a contributor.
Most visitors had poppies to wear, or to place in a special location. Many had small Canadian flags on sticks for the same purpose, or to place at a Canadian grave. The grave of Canada's Unknown Soldier has a special headstone in Cabaret Rouge Cemetery near Vimy Ridge. It is easily identified from a distance because of the dozens of little Canadian flags placed beside it.
The actual remains of our Unknown Soldier were transferred in 2000 from France to a tomb at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. Poppies are often added to the tomb by visitors, especially on November 11th. The original Cabaret Rouge headstone is in the Canadian War Museum, in Ottawa, in a quiet room of Remembrance. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the sun shines through a window and illuminates the headstone of:
A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR
A CANADIAN REGIMENT
KNOWN UNTO GOD
I began by describing yesterday morning when we drove to Vimy Ridge, so I should continue and finish this report. Our bus dropped us several kilometres from the memorial and we walked along with thousands of others in snaking lines reminiscent of airports, stadiums, museums, cathedrals and theme parks. From time to time many of us had the happy experience of encountering a friend or neighbour in the adjacent snaking line, and often it was someone we actually thought was back home in Canada. The "shuttle shuffle" carried us through the security checkpoint and on to the shuttle buses that took us several kilometres to Vimy Ridge. On arrival, large crowds left the shuttle buses and moved in a very orderly (but slow) manner to the plateau-like ridge top that 100 years ago was traversed by thousands of other Canadians in khaki. By 3:00pm every visitor had a chair, a sitting place on the grass or a place to stand. It was hot and the water stations were well used.
The ceremony began, the speeches and narratives were poignant and thought provoking and the soldiers and performers were professional and evocative. The Gunners, of course, fired their guns; and for only a few moments in our own lives the smell of cordite drifted across the ridge. Then, with the singing of the national anthems, the ceremony came to an end and the challenge of getting tens of thousands of spectators back to the shuttle buses began.
There was very little grumbling and most people accepted the reality of the slow dispersion of the crowd and often used it as an opportunity to chat with other participants. The first comments were often about the event and which aspects people liked the most. Weather was often an opening topic, mainly because most of the crowd were Canadians. Conversations moved to where we each live and to why we were each there at Vimy.
I met an extended family from New Brunswick, New Jersey and Ontario who had recently visited a particular grave. A nearby gentleman from Toronto turned out to be a former teacher and vice principal. From his pocket he produced an aluminum First War identity disk and told me about his grandfather and added a great deal about the CEF battalion in which he had served. He had visited his grave earlier in the week.
As we inched toward the shuttle buses a soon-to-be-retired Westjet pilot (who is also an N-scale railway enthusiast in Edmonton) and I talked about the impact of both World Wars on Canada and on all Canadians. We even discussed the dozen or so WWI Canadian CEF railway battalions and the memorial bronze statue of a soldier and an angel in front of the old CPR station in downtown Vancouver.
The steady hum of conversation among family, friends and complete strangers was frequently interrupted by thousands of spontaneous Canadian school kids loudly and proudly singing "O Canada". By 9pm we were back on "Gunner1" and heading back to Lille.
Perhaps in 1918 and 1919 our returning CEF soldiers had good reason to bemoan (and whinge about) the days and months it took for them to return home to Canada, to families and to friends. Sadly, thousands of their comrades were never able to join them for that journey home. We will remember them.
Stu
Lists
The following pages contain additional information relating to the 15th Field Artillery Regiment, RCA
Honours and Awards
Trophies
Commanding Officers and Regimental Sergeants Major
Honoraries
Battery Commanders and Battery Sergeants Major
Band Appointments
Nominal Roll
Guns of the Regiment
Memorial Page
The following pages contain additional information relating to the 15th Field Artillery Regiment, RCA
Honours and Awards
Trophies
Commanding Officers and Regimental Sergeants Major
Honoraries
Battery Commanders and Battery Sergeants Major
Band Appointments
Nominal Roll
Guns of the Regiment
Memorial Page