Lest We ForgetTed Engelmann |
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John Maxwell Good was a stonemason in Edmonton, Canada, with a wife and young daughter when he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces (CEF) in ▪ May 16, 2008, Villers Station Cemetery (eight miles northwest of Arras, northern France). Brian Brooks, a twenty-one-year-old Canadian college student walks through the groomed cemetery of Commonwealth soldiers killed in World War I. Our group of twenty-three follows at a respectable distance. Toward the back of the small cemetery Brian locates the grave of Private Good. Brian stands a few moments while reading the inscription, introducing himself to the man he has come so far to find. Brian bends down and gently places a small Canadian flag at the gravestone standing in French soil. Private John Maxwell Good was Brian’s maternal great-great-grandfather, and Brian is the first person of his family to visit the grave in ninety-one years.
Brian’s mother said that her mother still has the telegram her grandmother received when John Maxwell Good was killed. An e-mail from Brian’s mother explained, “Brian hadn’t told my mom that he had actually made it to visit the grave until after he was back, and when he shared the details of the visit to the cemetery my mother cried. It meant so much to her. I think that was a real highlight for Brian as well…when he could say that he had been there for his grandmother, her mother and father and her grandfather.” From May 4 to 22, 2008, I accompanied a field study class touring Canadian battlefields, memorials, and cemeteries of “The Great War.” We traveled eighteen days along the Western Front, from Ypres, Belgium, to Lille and Verdun, France. The trip was arranged by Dr. Stephen Davies, Project Director of the Canadian Letters and Images Project at Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC (<www.mala.bc.ca/history/letters>). As a war veteran (1968-1969) of the American war in Vietnam, and chaperone, I was also observing the effect of our trip on these twenty-two Canadian students: a war that ended ninety years ago on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Often I found myself overwhelmed by the enormous number of casualties and lost: 250,000 French casualties (April 16-29, 1917); 60,000 British causalities in the first two hours of a morning charge (July 1, 1917); and during a 100-day campaign (July 30-November 10, 1917), 700,000 casualties were counted on all sides. I would not presume to compare the fear, terror, and chaotic moments found on the Western Front to my experiences in Vietnam. However, I can certainly empathize. After visiting numerous cemeteries, students began to feel overwhelmed. One student felt guilty for ignoring many of the graves. While reading many of the gravestone inscriptions at the first cemeteries, we soon found there were too many. After a bit, we passed by the graves without paying much attention, becoming emotionally numb from the magnitude of the loss on all sides. The Canadian losses seemed personal to the students. Each student had six small Canadian paper flags to be placed at a grave or memorial they thought significant. Politics aside, it was interesting that a few flags were left at graves of soldiers from different countries based perhaps on a student’s date of birth being the same as the soldier’s birth or death some ninety years earlier. A personal bond was forged across time, distance, and culture.
▪ May 12, near Lille, France, the Somme. One (of many) poignant moments for me as a veteran happened at Vimy Ridge, a memorial to the first major battle of the Somme won by Canadians. Descending thirty feet into the Grange Tunnel, I took up my usual position at the end of the group. I had emotional triggers to dank, musty smelling underground bunkers and tunnels from time spent in my underground bunker being bombarded by Vietcong mortars and rockets. I was ready to scoot out the back if my emotions got triggered. Luckily, the tunnels were cemented for erosion control and safety, and there was not any smell. Still, while anticipating the worst, my anxiety increased causing me to nag a couple students to catch up with the group. Up top, I took the two young men aside and explained why I was so anxious. My eyes were moist as I told these two college students I was scared my emotional fear of the past would cause me to run. My anxiety was about me, not their straggling. About thirty minutes later, the class was listening to another guide at the impressive Vimy Ridge Memorial. A student asked what people from other countries thought of the memorial. She quickly replied one Vietnam veteran had approached her, tears in his eyes, and told her the tunnels brought back his experiences in Vietnam. I have no idea the impression left with the two young men I encountered, but I hope it was positive. One of those things you may never know. The students who participated on this trip developed a personal experience with World War I, though through the distant prism of history. It is a reminder of the importance of history and the powerful impact of going beyond the text to explore the past. From my own experience of being in the presence of World War I, walking in my father’s footsteps in the Philippines from World War II, realizing we “forgot” the Korean War, feeling my own pain and chaos of Vietnam, and patrolling in an up-armored Humvee in Baghdad, I wonder what we can teach about war. Maybe nothing. It is too personal. Lest we forget. Ted Engelmann is an OAH Distinguished Lecturer, photographer, educator, and veteran of the war in Vietnam. From November to December 2008, Ted embedded at FOB Falcon and Combat Outpost 803 in Baghdad, Iraq. His photographs of soldiers in Iraq will compare and contrast with his experience in Vietnam forty years ago. Ted is currently living in Denver finishing a memoir about the effects of war. His web site is <http://www.tedengelmann.com>. | ||
As Brian put his Canadian flag in the soil in front of the gravestone, then the bouquet of roses, I do not think there was a dry eye in the group of college students from British Columbia. All the textbook knowledge about the war was set aside during the few moments of silence, collectively supporting the first of his family to stand before this grave so far away from home. 
▪ May 6, near Ypres, Belgium. The students went through a “platoon experience,” at the Passchendaele Museum. They were issued full uniforms: trousers, blouse, boots, puttees (do not wrap them too tight!), helmet, .303 rifles (inoperable, but still heavy), gas mask, someone carried several Mills bombs (7 kg “hand grenades”), and two stretcher bearers. As we marched the three-kilometer path to Tyne Cot Cemetery under a hot sun, the group was “gassed.” A wounded soldier required stretcher bearers—four to carry one takes more guns off the line—and Mills bombs were thrown at a German pillbox. If they wanted to live, the throwers needed to improve.