Grave photos of 47 soldiers stir deep memories
Photojournalist’s images of gravestones mark all 47 who died in D-Day invasion
Anne Cohoon came to Regina on Monday to attend the funeral for her brother Boris Letwinka. Little did she know she would come across something that would bring back memories of another brother’s death long ago.
Michael Kurkowsky died on July 22, 1944. A soldier in the Second World War, he was laid to rest in a cemetery in France. So when Cohoon by chance came across a photo installation honouring Saskatchewan-born soldiers who died on D-Day, the memory of her brother’s death came flooding back.
“At 91, it’s a little difficult,” said Cohoon about seeing the installation. “I think that Canadians do not realize how lucky we are to be living in a country that is free of war.”
The installation was created by amateur historian and photojournalist Chris Harris, and was set up on the lawn in front of the war memorial at the Saskatchewan Legislative Building on Tuesday. It features 47 photos of the graves of each Saskatchewan-born man who died on D-Day. Harris took the photos in Normandy last year.
“It’s a really powerful, powerful moment when you just read the ages on the graves ... and I want people who can’t go to France to see that, to be able to experience that here,” said Harris.
Tuesday was a windy day and the photos wavered in their stands on the lawn, the way one might imagine the poppies blowing between the crosses in John McCrae’s famous First World War poem, In Flanders Fields.
The photos were set up in rows, like a cemetery, so it may have been easy for anyone walking through the installation to imagine they were actually walking through the graves of the fallen soldiers.
“I think that when you have a visual depiction of how many graves are there, it just changes your whole understanding of the sheer amount of loss that was experienced in these few years,” said Harris, who is planning another, bigger installation for next Remembrance Day.
This summer marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Italy during the Second World War, and Harris plans to photograph the graves of 246 Saskatchewan-born soldiers who died there. He will show the photos either at Victoria Park or again at the Legislative Building in November.
Harris said it is important to remind his generation and generations to come of the sacrifices that were made during the Second World War.
“There (are) very few people left alive today that can tell us about the sacrifices, that can tell us about what war was like at this scale ... so we need to do our job to document this history going forward so that future generations can learn those lessons.”
Unlike many people Harris spoke to during his research for the installation, Cohoon was able to visit her brother’s grave in France in 1986. As someone who has experienced the consequences of war, she said she doesn’t like the violence going on in the world right now.
The installation was set up on Tuesday only, from 7:30 a.m., the same time Canadian soldiers hit Juno Beach on D -Day, until 9 p.m.