Treading gingerly: Like many others, we were not prepared for the depth of emotion we felt at Beaumont Hamel

The Telegram: Thursday, August 3, 2000
Insight: Slice of Life, Page 11

By Peter Jackson (Lifestyle's editor)

The endless fields of midsummer crops punctuated by distant steeples offered little indication we were in northern France again. You need a passport going to and from Britain, but on the continent, borders can be as indistinguishable as the seamless green expanse of cornstalks.

Two days earlier, we had driven straight to Belgium after crossing the Channel to Calais. There were 35 of us on a brown-and-yellow Macpherson coach, including the 20 members of Cantus Vocum Chamber Choir, director Chad Stride, and a few relatives and friends.

I and the other choir members were halfway through a 10-day tour of Europe that began with a short recital of sacred music at St. Paul's Cathedral in London and would end at a two-day international choral festival in Gouda, Holland.

Also on the itinerary was a day trip to Cologne, Germany, to sing briefly in the cathedral before taking a relaxing boat excursion up the Rhine.

Cologne cathedral was spared during the Second World War by Allied bombers who some say used it as a beacon while they flattened the city. By day, it's a sooty monstrosity that fills the sky around its modern surroundings, but in the evening sun its dark stonework is transformed into glowing, gothic splendour.

A DIFFERENT BATTLE

Today, however, we were evoking a different battle. Today, we were headed for the First World War monument at Beaumont Hamel, where the Royal Newfoundland Regiment was decimated by enemy fire in a failed advance on July 1, 1916.

Our British driver, Barry, had a flat accent that made him difficult to understand at times. He had a proclivity for cigarettes, and a penchant for a pint after working hours.

But he had an unflappable air of absorption on the road, and no one doubted his navigational skills as we negotiated our way through a maze of tiny French towns. Most of us were preoccupied with other thoughts, idle chatter and word games, a distracted frame of mind spawned by the previous night's revelry in Belgium.

Our concert in the historic Belgian city of Brugge had turned out to be a highlight. Having spent a day strolling in awe through narrow cobblestone streets, and dashing through the rain in formal attire to reach the small concert hall, we basked in enthusiastic applause from a capacity audience.

Later, an even warmer reception -- replete with food, wine and exquisite Belgian beer -- awaited us in a small schoolroom off a hidden courtyard, hosted by the local choir with which we had shared the stage.

A small sign heralded the road to Beaumont Hamel, but we stopped first at an old stone house that had been converted into an inn. The owner, a British woman named Avril Williams, had been expecting us, and a modest spread of food and beverages awaited on tables outside.

It began to rain as we arrived, so Avril and an assistant hovered over us with umbrellas as we filled our plates and scurried inside to eat.

After dinner, Avril showed us a recently excavated trench leading up to the back of the house. She had suspected its existence after noticing graffiti on the walls of her cellar.

The markings turned out to be names of soldiers -- Avril's inn had been a First World War field dressing post. We thanked our host, boarded the bus and proceeded a few hundred yards along the road to the Newfoundland memorial.

The rain had abated, so we quickly made our way to the monument for a group photograph. From an elevated perch at the base of the caribou statue, we sang O Canada and the Ode to Newfoundland.

In many ways, Beaumont Hamel is an innocuous piece of acreage, charmingly groomed and lined by groves of trees. The trenches and shell craters are still in evidence, though softened into smooth, green ripples. A tidy graveyard lies across a field of tall grass, at the bottom of a gentle valley.

Like many who came before, we were unprepared for the depth of emotion that stirs as time-honoured facades of remembrance fall away and immediacy takes hold.

The neatly kept ripples were once foul ruts where young men huddled in refuge for one last time; the idyllic valley, a killing field.

Floral wreaths, marble shrines and veterans' opaque stares cannot more firmly dispel the ``old lie'' -- dulce et decorum est -- than * treading gingerly on the living, sacred ground of a battlefield.

A STIRRING MOMENT

The moment of awareness arrived for most during the final verse of the Ode: ``As loved our fathers so we love; where once they stood we stand ...'' After struggling through the last few notes, we silently broke ranks for a private moment.

A young Parks Canada guide from Sarnia, Ont. eventually guided us around the site, deferring awkwardly to our lineage and betraying no small measure of emotion herself. Two hours later, under brighter skies and amid a symphony of birdsong, we returned to our coach.

Our ``brief'' stopover had consumed the better part of an afternoon, and we were now in a rush to get to our next destination, Venlo, in eastern Holland. A planned visit to Vimy Ridge -- where a Canadian contingent finally helped turn the tide in favour of the Allies -- did not materialize.

The irony of our altered schedule was hard to escape. In honouring those fallen in defeat, we would have to forgo a celebration of victory.


Peter Jackson is The Telegram's Lifestyles editor.