Besides doing fun things like visiting the Atomium and the Grand' Place, trying new beers and eating Indian food, we took two days and went to the World War 1 battlefields where Canadians fought and lost their lives.
We concentrated on the Ypres Salient battles, in Belgium and the Battle of Vimy Ridge, in France. We saw scores of Commonwealth cemeteries, where tens of thousands of Canadians lie buried. We listened to our guide tell stories of horror and bravery, gas attacks, valour and soldiers stumbling forward through mud up to their hips, loaded down with equipment. To see the "crosses row on row in Flander's fields" was a moving, memorable vision I will never forget.
To stand under the archway of the Menin Gate in Ypres, where the thousands of names of those Canadians whose bodies were never found are carved into marble, and to listen to the trumpeters play "The Last Post", as they have done every evening since July 1928, was a sobering experience I'll never forget.
The monument at Vimy Ridge takes your breathe away! It's beautiful, solemn and the sculptures move you to tears. I don't think I've every been so proud of being Canadian as I was when I stood looking at this creative piece of art in memory of the outstanding battle of Vimy Ridge, won by the Canadians, after unsuccessful attempts by the French and the British. Pierre Berton's book "Vimy" helped me to really understand who our men were and what they went through.
Thousands of lives were lost uselessly and stupidly in the Great War; there was pigheadedness and rigidity but there were also amazing moments of bravery and glory. The Canadians at Vimy Ridge pushed hard to fight together as a people and for the first time, they were able to do it. Their rigourous training and comraderie won the battle. I know now that we lost a whole generation (60-70,000) of fine young men and I think Canada took a long time to recover. War is a horrible thing. Thousands of tombstones or crosses "row on row" are the greatest preachers of peace.
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