Vimy Ridge War Memorial

Monday 31 May 1999. Ah well, all good things have to come to an end, but we are not totally finished with this holiday yet! We are leaving Paris certainly, but now there is a few hours travelling through the French countryside and a stop at Vimy Ridge, scene of terrible fighting during the First World War.

The storming and capture of the Vimy Ridge by the four Canadian Divisions in April 1917 was thought a turning point at the time and brought Canada new status in the eyes of the world. 3,600 Canadian soldiers died on the first day alone - 9 April, 1917. Their sacrifice and hard-won achievement was overturned in the stalemates, advances and retreats of the Somme, later in the war. The area was left devastated by shelling and mining. Not a blade of grass lived. This crater, more than 80 years on, shows something of the ferocity that the men lived and died through. 80 years of wind and erosion have levelled it out somewhat, but also consider that approximately two thirds of the material blown out of the ground goes straight up and therefore falls back into the crater it created.

Whilst elsewhere throughout northern France, the ground has been levelled and returned to farmland, here at Vimy it has been left as a reminder of those days and as a tribute and memorial to the victors of Vimy.

Tons of unexploded material is still under the mounds and shell holes of the area and most of it has been fenced off. The grass and trees were all grown from seed sent from Canada, as France gave the land to the Canadians in gratitude and recognition of their bravery and achievement. A small building houses displays, maps, artifacts and a story. The story of the entire army of a country, 100,000 men, working together in a single action to capture the highest ridge of land in the area.

Between April 1917 and the end of the war, 19,000 Canadians gave their lives for their country and their allies. Their bodies lay buried in the fields and villages near Vimy. This is a place for reflection and remembrance. But also a place to gain understanding and respect. The Memorial signifies also the soaring hopes for future peace. Whatever one's feeling about war are, unless there are those who are willing to risk and sacrifice all for their beliefs, then those who care nothing for the rights of others, their life, or ownership, will have their way unopposed.

The Memorial has a number of sculptures, carved where they now stand from huge blocks of stone. The monument took 11 years to build and was deigned by Canadian sculptor and architect, Walter Seymour Allward. Six thousand tons of limestone brought from a Roman quarry in the Adriatic, stand on a bed of concrete. The massive figure represents Canada, a nation mourning her dead. Carved on the monument are the names of the 11,285 Canadians who died in France and whose final resting place had not been found.

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WWI Postcard From The Front

The last we heard from Edgar Pedley of the 59th Signal Corps, it was 1916 and he was about to leave for France.

It's now 18 March 1917. Edgar is on Active Service and the postcard he sends is simply postmarked "Field Post Office". A crimson stamp mark attests that his comments have been passed by the Field Censor.

The postcard is one of a French series "La Grand Guerre Européene" ("The Great European War") - even at this stage it was becoming known as "The Great War"... We don't know where the postcard was sent from - the postcard looks as though it once gave the location away, but this has been rubbed or scraped until the name has been obliterated so that if it came into the hands of the enemy they would not be able to tell where Allied troops were stationed.

The remaining caption reads: Intériur de la Sncrerie (sic) - Interior of the Sugar house

Either the U of "sucrerie" was placed upside down by mistake or every U had been lost to war damage and the N inserted as most people (French speakers at least...) would know what was meant. Edgar filled every available space on the back of the postcard yet without giving away any secrets - no mention of his unit or place names, or his rank. In a short sentence right at the top of the postcard he writes: "Read page 3, column 4 Mail Mar 17th" Obviously significant in some way, but I've not been able to find a copy to see. It's possible that this message could have been added later. I can't imagine that Edgar would have managed to read the paper from France only the day after it was published.

There is another postscript added towards the top of the card but in the order that I suspect Edgar wrote his card, he says:

Mar 18th 17

Just a pc to say still going on alright. Parcel not yet to hand, I wonder if somebody's doing it on me, they will have a good time but expect it will turn up eventually, will let you know on receipt. A pal and I have just come a cycle ride to a small village about 4 miles, a terrible place now, but nevertheless possesses a YMCA (in an old barn). Thank you for papers received last night, 17th. Kindest regards to all AEP.

The postscript at the top reads: Thanks for letters of Sunday just received, sorry to hear of Arthur's condition, shall be glad to hear how he's going on.

Postcard from the Hayley Easthope Collection.

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Florence's Ponte Vecchio

8 August 2006. After our look round the Duomo our hairy-armpitted guide walked us around to the Ponte Vecchio bridge and left us with an hour or so to wander around. Florence is a city of statues. They are literally every few yards. They were littering the place so profusely that they set up a few arches in the Piazza della Signoria and bunged a collection of them there. Every one a masterpiece as it were. Anyway, opposite this scrapyard of famous sculpture is Michaelangelo's David. Not the original, which is in the museum, but a copy. Exact down to the oversized hands - though if you were about to kill the giant Goliath then oversized hands might just have come in ...er... hand-y... Anyway according to Hairy-Pits, it was Michaelangelo's way of saying "I made this with my hands" and more fool him... Should have used a chisel... Pausing only to tie the end of her armpit hair to the whip aerial of a Vespa scooter that was stopped at some traffic lights, we went to have a look at the bridge. I'm kidding! I'm kidding! It was a Lambretta... Ponte Vecchio is one of the great Medieval bridges of the world. This is what London Bridge used to look like at the time of the Great Fire of London. Only with more heads on stakes... The construction of a stone-built bridge was started in 1345. Most of the shops were butchers' shops until 1593 when the city's finest decided they would rather have something more elegant and stylish on their showcase feature and they moved in the goldsmiths, who have remained to this day (although they are very very old and feeble...) The gold shops line both sides of the bridge, though of necessity, the shops are not very deep, even the ones that overhang the side of the bridge parapet! You can, by the way, buy much of the same jewellery much cheaper a few streets away from the bridge. But it's not the same. Well it was for Miss Franny as just looking in the shops costs the same either on or off the bridge... The view both up or down the River Arno from the bridge is very aesthetically pleasing. Another way of saying "nice". It became for some reason a cool thing to do, for lovers to attach a padlock to the gates of the bridge. It has been there for 700 years so the act symbolised a wish for a long relationship. After the first few thousand padlocks again the city's finest stepped in and it's now an offence with a 50 Euro fine attached... Why would a bridge have gates? Because they are a route for friends - or foes - across rivers and into cities. Armed forces the world over have a great affection for the heady combination of bridges and dynamite. Ponte Vecchio was the only bridge across the River Arno that the Germans left intact. Presumably under the express orders of Hitler who had either promised Eva Braun they would take a padlock there, or he had plans to number the bricks and transport it back to the Fatherland... Our meeting place was outside the Basilica of Santa Croce which was started on May 3 1294 with the facade of marble added 1857-63. As if I can be bothered to remember that... Michaelangelo's tomb is inside it. According to our guide who was a bit red in the face with the effort of dragging a Lambretta behind her...

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Something Fishy...

The scanning - as you may just have noticed - has slowed down a bit as I've been very busy at work and not at home all that much to do any scanning! However, I'm pulling a few 1981 shots together for this entry.

In the summer of that year we visited the summer fair of the local branch of BLESMA - the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association.

At that time there were still a couple of old soldiers there who had lost limbs in World War One I seem to remember and their prosthetics included the use of old fashioned hooks to replace a hand.

There was a small fairground laid on for visitors as a fund-raising venture and Gill won a prize on one of the stands. She wanted a goldfish. We hadn't banked on this, but she most definitely wanted a goldfish and a comb, screwdriver or a small and tatty plastic toy wasn't going to sway her away from wanting a goldfish.

We arrived home with this small, over-hot and suffocating little fish and it lived for a day in a large glass mixing bowl until we could buy a small plastic tank to put it in. Gillian decided it would be named "Eric the Twink". I've no idea where that came from...

Eric, against all expectation, did not die half an hour after getting him home. He stubbornly held onto life, requiring the purchase of said plastic tank so that Fran could wash out his bowl and make more cup cakes...

We grew fond of him and a few friends were found for him. He did then eventually pop his clogs not long after the new friends came... But these grew to need a larger tank and a couple of them, a large goldfsh called Jaws and a shubunkin called Bluey are seen above.

Jaws eventually grew to around 6 inches in length and, exactly as with model train sets, we realised that if we wanted a more scenic environment then we had to shrink the scale somewhat and at Christmas 1981 a 3 feet long tropical fishtank made an appearance.

The fish were much smaller, more colourful, much more varied in shapes and behaviour and ...er... bred like rabbits...

But the hours of pleasure (or hypnotism) we got from sitting and staring at the large tank was brilliant.



Large versions of the photos: goldfish and shubunkin, guppy, fish tank

Down The Mousehole

Wednesday 7 August 1996. After the stones we stopped in Mousehole, which the locals pronounce "Mowzil".

A bit like Polperro this is a small fishing village. It's one of those places where you can sit and relax and just drink in the unhurried atmosphere. The harbour is extremely pretty but nowhere near as busy as Polperro. There's a small beach that faces the harbour with sand at one end with pebbles making up the rest.

Chains snake down from their anchoring point on the wall behind the beach to individual boats that either bob on the water or, at low tide, tilt attractively on the harbour bed.

Unlike Polperro or Mevagissy, the streets here are fairly quiet. Not that this picturesque quiet place has always led a sheltered life.

A placque on a wall reminds us that the Spanish landed here and ransacked the place, killing inhabitants left and right. This was, admittedly, a few hundred years earlier than 1996 so we felt safe enough... You can't help but think that the Spanish were somewhat lacking in boldness, choosing to invade at such a quiet spot where they were unlikely to (a) face much opposition, or (b) find much in the way of plunder...

We had a look round the tiny village then made our way back to the harbour.

I sat on a bench next to a sleeping black cat and did a sketch of the some of the buildings facing the harbour. On the next bench a man was painting designs on round stones in water colours, presumably to sell as paper weights. I got sunburnt a bit on the back of my neck!

A very agreeable place!

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Blackpool Town Centre Rejuvenation

The Council have announced (ages ago actually) that the area from the railway station into town was going to have a massive redevelopment.

It's started by finishing a job that Hitler started in the Second World War. One of his bombers got a bit lost during the blitz on Liverpool and unloaded its bombs over Blackpool, destroying houses in Seed Street. In the event the row of terraced properties was demolished and the area has been in use ever since as a car park. The properties facing, the houses on Buchanan Street, have now been demolished. The plans for the new development as shown in the local paper several months ago looked very grand. There seems little point to me in putting up loads of shops and offices whose rent will eat up every bit of profit - that's the problem with all the market stalls we have in grand buildings like the old Woolworths building Pricebusters etc.

More to come...

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