Medicine, Military; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, Canadian
In front of us, and to the left, is a
crater--an immense hollow in the ground, caused by
the explosion by the enemy or ourselves at
some earlier stage of the war, of a huge load of
dynamite, ammonal or some other high
explosive. This crater is situated in what was No
Man's Land before April 9 and the great push,
at which time it was used as a killing place for
our enemies. Now it is a burial place for our
friends. The French Government has notified
us that if, in burying our dead, we will put the
bodies in groups of fifty in each burial plot,
they will buy the hallowed ground, keep it in
repair, and present it to the British people.
And the corps burying party has utilized
Lichfield Crater for this purpose, has gathered
together fifty or sixty of our gallant dead, and
deposited their sacred remains in this spot,
erecting over the grave a large wooden cross
with the names of the dead upon it. In
limestone they have laid out the following
epitaph:
To THE BRAVE CANADIANS OF THE SECOND
DIVISION WHO GAVE UP THEIR LIVES ON
APRIL 9,1917.
R. I. P.
What hallowed shrines these cemeteries of
fifty will become after the war, when those
whose loved ones paid their full measure of
devotion in the cause of freedom are able to
come to visit the deservedly honored graves of
their husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, and
sweethearts. I visited this little cemetery this
morning. As I left it some Tommies passed
with a large, red paper balloon sent across by
the Germans with the message, "Canadians,
we are ready to quit if you are."
But the Canadians, the British, the Americans,
or the French, are not yet ready to quit!
Nor will they be till the day comes when
Prussian militarism is curbed so thoroughly that
your boys and mine will not have to give up
their lives in conquering it ten years from now!
CHAPTER VII
GASSED!
About a month after the Canadians had
taken Vimy Ridge we relieved the ----
Canadian Battalion in the town of Vimy, where
our battalion was in support to another
battalion holding the front lines some distance in
advance. Our Regimental Aid Post on our
previous stay in this town had been in the
cellar of a brewery near the railway station.
Since we had left the shelling in the neighborhood
had become so severe that this cellar had
been abandoned. It had caught fire and all
the woodwork had burned up. Out of curiosity
I visited this old cellar on our arrival at
Vimy and found it still hot as hades from the
heating up of the brick and cement. It was
absolutely uninhabitable. So we were forced
to search for other quarters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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