The numbers seem hard to comprehend when just written down.
Every year in August I pack up our car and head off for the South of France for a well deserved holiday in the sun, lazing on the beach. We catch the ferry from Dover to Calais and zoom off down the motorway till we get to St. Tropez. In the north of France you pass fields and villages with small graveyards in from World War 1. The year before last we thought we should stop and visit one, so we went to a place called Vimy.
You enter the site through a wood, still cordoned off because of unstable munitions from that war. You park up and can look round the trenches that are still there, grassed over and dry, the day we went the sun was shining. You marvel at the immense size of the craters left by the shells then you wander off on the paths to where the cemetaries are. There isn't one big one rather a few, each surrounded by small stone walls with wrought iron gates. The grass is immaculate, there are no weeds to be seen, beautiful roses are everywhere. And you look at the rows and rows and rows of white headstones, in their pristine lines. There are some people walking up and down, you meet their eyes but say nothing, there is nothing to say. It's peaceful, quiet and we walked silently along the paths looking at the gravestones, they give the name, regiment and age. They were all so young,some even 16. At this time in the war all these young men would have been volunteers, rushing off to the recruiting office wanting to do their bit for King and Country, trusting the powers that be that this was a just war, wanting to do the right thing. So many dead.
Leaving the cemetaries, we didn't visit them all it would have taken hours maybe days, we went onto the memorial. You have to walk up a long road to get to the Vimy Ridge Memorial, it's huge, imposing and stunning. It was built with money raised by public subscription in Canada. Walking around it you can read all the names of the fallen, thousands of them. it is humbling.
Of course it's right that we are prepared to fight and die for our freedom and rights but it has to be a just war. we have to be able to trust that our leaders aren't sacrificing our troops for political points.
When I read the title of this thread, '2000 dead' I was immediately taken back to Vimy, all those graves, all those young lives lost. We really haven't learnt anything have we?
