Letters from Europe: We Will Remember Them
Editor’s note: Students from Kensington, Three Oaks and Kinkora high schools are travelling through Europe for the 100th anniversary of Vimy Ridge. The Journal Pioneer has partnered with the Kensington Intermediate Senior High School group to send regular reports of their travels.
Saturday, April 8
We began our day by visiting the Thelus Military Cemetery, where we met the soldiers that we had researched and prepared letters for at home.
As we read the letters to them, we experienced a very powerful and emotional moment. We felt we had created a connection with them.
Then there was a moment of silence for all the fallen Canadian soldiers at the cemetery. We took pictures with our soldiers and sang O’Canada. Next we went to the EF Vimy Hub Program.
There we spent a couple of hours participating in various activities well approved for a teenage audience. They were created to put yourself in a soldier’s shoes, and experience the life in war.
Our last stop was at Beaumont Hamel. There we learned about the many Newfoundland soldiers who fought in the Battle of the Somme.
Due to the extremities of the battle, it is believed 200 to 300 soldiers are buried deep in the ground today.
Sunday is a big day, where we attend the Vimy Ridge 100th Anniversary Ceremony.
Bonjour from France! Friday, April 7
Today we started the day by visiting many cemeteries and battle sites to commemorate fallen soldiers from Second World War.
The first place we visited was Pointe de Hoc, which featured hundred-foot cliffs, which the American Rangers, an elite military force, had to scale in order to capture German artillery. Our next destination was a German gravesite, La Cambe, which featured over 24,000 fallen German soldiers. Next we stopped in a typical French seaside village called Arromanche for lunch, and to explore extraordinary scenery such as the beach, narrow streets filled with boutiques and a steep hill that clearly displayed the village from a birdseye view. Arromanche was also a site of D-Day landings on June 6, 1944. The beautiful Beny-sur-Mer cemetery followed lunch, and contained 2,000 graves for Canadians that passed in Second World War.
We also were able to find graves of a solider that used to live in Kensington, and of a KISH student’s family member. Juno Beach was the last stop of the day. At Juno Beach we had the chance to walk through the information centre, watch educational videos on the specific event and we were able to walk down onto the beach ourselves, where we observed how difficult it must have been for a soldier arriving on D-Day. For the rest of our day we drove from Normandy to Vimy, so that we can visit Beaumont-Hamel and Thelus cemetery on Saturday as well as the EF Vimy Ridge interpretive centre.