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November2000 West Vancouver Historical Society Page 7 ANOTHER FALL, ANOTHER REMEMBRANCE DAY By: dorothy Bell Take Time to Remember By the time you read this another Remembrance Day will have come and gone, so it seems timely for the following article to make an appearance in our newsletter. This is an excerpt from a speech by Ms. Dorothy Bell, a member of The Royal Canadian Legion, upon returning from a Legion sponsored Pilgrimage of Remembrance. Amidst the bombing of World War II, while thousands of young men were dying on the battlefields of Europe, I was bom. As a child growing up during the war and in post war England, my memories are of bomb shelters, food rationing and powdered egg! Although there was very little money, we did enjoy going to the "pictures". We watched cartoons, newsreels and war films, which we really enjoyed because there was usually a romantic hero. The real war was of little consequence to us because what we saw, was after all, just the "movies". This past July 1st, I co-ordinated Ihe Royal Canadian Legion Pilgrimage of Remembrance where we visited the Commonwealth War Cemeteries in Europe. It was then that I realized the true consequence of war. I stood on the stony beaches of Dieppe. Looking up at the massive limestone cliffs from the beach below, it was clear why, on August 19th 1942 hundreds of Canadians had been slaughtered in the ill fated "Dieppe Raid". As our troops landed on the beaches, the Germans were waiting to pick them off like flies. They didn't have a chance. We went from one site to another, one cemetery to another where we conducted services and placed a wreath at the cross of Remembrance. You might think that after the fourth or fifth ceremony we would be bored with it all, but quite the opposite happened. With each service the emotions became stronger and stronger. Many of our group had particular graves to visit, but I found myself drawn to those that had no names at all. It was on these that I placed a Canadian Flag. Not only did we lose the men buried beneath them, but we have lost the sons and daughters they would have borne, and their grandchildren and great grandchildren. The price of war is high indeed. In Caen we were invited to participate in the fifty-second anniversary of the liberation of Caen. The ceremony was held in the town square. French military personnel were lined up on one side of the square and our group, in our Royal Canadian Legion uniforms, were lined up opposite them. We were standing at attention, eyeball to eyeball. The colour party included both the French and Canadian flags which brought out the national pride in all of us. After the ceremony we were invited to attend a reception in the town hall where we met the Mayor of Caen and many of the local diginitaries. We stopped at a monument in Buron, a little village outside Caen. Were were about to re-board the coach, when a woman ran out of a house waving. She asked us to wait as she went inside and came out with a white garden table. She set it up on the sidewalk and placed a Canadian flag in the centre. A man brought out some bottles of wine and more people appeared. They belonged to an organization called The Friends of Canada. They had heard we were coming and wanted to share a toast with us. We were very touched by this gesture of friendship. Everywhere we went people made us feel like heroes. "They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old, Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning : We will remember them." t Beaumont Hamel Memorial Park honours the members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment who died on July 1st 1916. Our Newfoundland & Labrador representative laid a wreath at the base of the bronze caribou that dominates the Great War battlefield, with trenches remaining undisturbed to this day. Although not without casualties, the battle of Vimy Ridge was a victorious one for the Canadians. The 22 miles of tunnels, which honeycomb the area now known as the Vimy Ridge Memorial Park, was one of the most remarkable engineering feats of World War I. There are four levels, the first two up to 75' below ground and the remaining two below that. As we entered the tunnels we tried to imagine what it must have been like so many years ago, but it was difficult for us to realize the appalling conditions our veterans had to suffer. In comparison to the dreadful tunnels, the magnificent Vimy Ridge monument is a wondrous site. It's the work of Tbronto sculptor, Walter S. Allward. It was started in 1925 and took 11 years to complete. It contains the names of 11,285 Canadians who gave their lives in France, and who have no known graves. (Contd. on page 8)