Soldier’s journal an inspiration
Teacher takes great-grandfather’s words with him to Vimy Ridge
George Chapman fought at Vimy Ridge, the battle that made us, and, bless him, kept a hand-written journal.
Years later, back in Ottawa, the entries were typed out by his son, Cyril — 80 pages in all — for family posterity. A copy was given to Chapman’s great-grandson, Jeff Scott, a teacher in the Renfrew area.
A couple of weeks ago, Scott was back at Vimy Ridge, journal in hand, on a cool, overcast day in northern France — a place he had never been — to honour the soldier, the man he knew only a little but had heard so much about.
He strode up to the war memorial, giant and white, all that soaring, aching limestone set in this quiet plain. He paused, in offertory.
“I set the journal down on the first step. I don’t know why,” he said one day last week. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”
These two objects, so infused with memory, now touching each other, almost 100 years after the First World War battle.
“I just had this incredible feeling, a mixture of patriotism and sympathy and awe. It was pretty powerful.”
Scott, 42, was among 28 teachers on a tour of military sites organized by the Juno Beach Centre, a museum and memorial set on the famous shore where many Canadians soldiers landed during the Normandy invasion of 1944.
An English teacher, Scott read a number of passages from the journal to the assembled teachers. For a moment, Chapman was alive yet.
He was a member of the 8th Field Company, Canadian Engineers, and also a skilled carpenter. Days after the epic battle in April, 1917, he helped erect a large cross on the ridge, now shelled and bloodied.
It felt, said Scott, like the right entry to read.
“After we captured Vimy Ridge, we erected a big wooden cross at the highest point: LaFolly farm. I got the job of making the cross. We set it in a concrete base. We used 8 by 8 timbers with a splice in the upright piece. A few days after it was erected, it was shelled. A few splinters were knocked off, but it was still standing when we left. The present Vimy memorial now stands in its place.”
There were lighter moments, too, in the inferno that is war.
“We came to the German field headquarters and strolled into the dugout. It was a good sized room dug into the hillside. At a table in the centre of the room, six high-brass German officers sat drinking coffee and eating cake.
“They were taken by complete surprise as they didn’t realize we were moving so fast. They hadn’t even posted a sentry at the entrance,” Chapman wrote. “They gave us no opposition when we ordered them against the wall while we drank the coffee and ate the cake.”
Chapman went on to have a remarkable life. Born in Norwich, England, in 1893, he came to Canada at age 17. He fought in both world wars and was a noted house builder in Ottawa, particularly in the Riverdale Avenue area, where he lived.
As a hobby, he took up the art of wood inlay, producing many beautiful, intricate pieces, often of Ottawa landmarks. One of his pieces, in fact, hangs in the current city hall.
He died in 1973, at the age of 80, when Scott was only a child. But Chapman’s daughter, Grace Davies, often spoke of her father, said Scott.
“He is one of those family characters who has a long shadow.” Davies lived to be 93 and died in March. She, too, was much on his mind at Vimy.
“I was thinking of my grandmother (Grace Davies), who passed away this spring. I was thinking about her brother Cyril, who typed (the journal) up, and mostly I was thinking about how our generation is really, really not well versed in what happened there.”
Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Juno Beach Centre brings about 30 Canadian teachers over to Europe every summer, at a cost of about $3,500 each for a nine-day tour. The aim is to provide a first-hand experience that will enhance their high school curricula back home.
Scott, from Opeongo High School near Cobden, teaches English literature and civics. He said it was a great experience to be a student again, adding that he’s gained more “texture” for his teaching of war poets.
“I was a student of something I thought I knew about, but that I knew so little about. It was a reminder of what an active thing it is to be a student.”
A teacher for 18 years, he has wanted to visit Vimy for a long time, particularly after many readings of Chapman’s journal, which roughly covers a two-year period to 1918.
Scott said t he was encouraged and inspired by a fellow teacher, John Pierce, who has his own family connections to Vimy through his grandfather, Percy.
They were struck at how warmly greeted the Canadians were in the rural areas of France.
“In every little village in Normandy that was liberated by Canadians, there were Canadian flags everywhere. One little village hosted a dinner and toasted us, and who the heck are we?”
Scott described the trip as life-affecting.
“I’ve been to a lot of places. But my No. 1 bucket-list place to go was Vimy Ridge.
“This was the big one for me.”