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What a sobering experiance today was. The train station in Vimy is a shady place. There are no people around. It was just us, the tracks, and a run down brick train station. Around back of the train station were a few houses and a sign pointing towards the town centre. We started to make our way to town, when this old man pulled over and asked in French if we were going to the Canadian Monument. We said 'Oui' and he motioned for us to get in. he showed us around town, where his house was, how one of the roads one hundred years ago had horse and carridge for transportation. Me speaking no french didn't understand much of what he was saying, but Cheryl having taken three years of it in school understood. Mr. Devloo (the old gentleman) drove us right to the park, which was much farther than we had anticipated. We got out of the car and he walked us to the info centre. The girl behind the desk goes 'Oh, you found some more." So he obviously does this a lot. We still didn't know his story though as to why he loves Cnadians. He said he would be back at 4pm to pick us up and there were two more Canadians for the car ride back to the train station. That gave us a good three hours to visit. We took a look around through the trenches of the Canadian front line. I could not believe how close the front lines were to each other. I could almost spit right over the crater to the German side. The landscape is full of craters from mines, tunnels and shelling. there were signs everywhere warning of hte danger of unexploded mines. We took a guided tour of the tunnels that the Candians dug. I can't even try to describe what it must have been like. After the tour we walked up to the Memorial, which is under some much needed restoration. On our way back to the info centre we stoped at Canadian Cemetary #2. It is row upon row of white head stones adourned with flowers and patches of gree manicured lawn. Many of the graves have no names, others have what regiment they were part of, and few with names and dates. Scattered infront of graves at random were Canadian flags looking out of place among the bleached head stones, but at the same time looked like they belong. Time, sun and weather had faded the colour of the flags, just like the engravings on the stones. Cheryl walked back to wait for the old man, but we still had a half hour so I walked to the smaller grave yard a few meters down the road. This site was smaller than the other, but just as nicely taken care of. All graves were of Canadians, where hte other cemetary had all nationalities. Most of the stones in the smaller site had names, regiments and ages. 23...18...37...20...25.. .19.
Monsieur Devloo picked us and two other Canadians up at 4pm like he said. Instead of driving us straight to the trains station he took us on a detour where he showed us the Cemetary of the French. As we turned the corner we all gasped at the sight of the wooden white crosses that seemed to go on forever. We were then taken up the road a bit to the German cemetary where we got out of the car and were showed a plaster releif of Vimy Ridge and the surrounding areas. He showed us where the front lines had been and the advances made. Luckly the guy and his wife spoke French. The German cemetary had 44,000+ men burried there. The Germans lost the most men. The crosses here, although not white represented four men. Mr. Devloo drove us back to the tran station whwere he gave us his address and showed us photos of his family. We wanted to know why he had such a passion for Canadians. He said it was because they were caring, kind, nice. His wife was from Canada. So Cheryl and I are going to send him a package because we noticed that his keychain was broken, so we will send him a new one.
previous travel blog entry
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