The Ring of Remembrance

Or, to give it its other title, the Memorial of Notre Dame de Lorette. We took the TGV to Lille today. Very smooth and comfortable and for 2€ per person were able to upgrade to first class.

We were traveling to meet a French friend of 40 years. His family visited us at New Year a couple of years ago.

It bucketed with rain. And I mean bucketed for 8 hours solid. But despite that, after a lovely lunch Vincent drove us (or more accurately sailed us) to Vimy ridge to the memorial there to those who died in the First World War. Within 60 seconds of getting out of the car I was soaked to the skin and the brolly was blown inside out. But compared to the hardships of the soldiers on both sides who fought there that was nothing so I went up to the memorial (see extra).

I've seen the memorial many times on TV but the scale is impressive, as are the bomb craters in he nearby woods.

It was then on to a new memorial - the aforementioned Ring of Remembrance - which was inaugurated some 18 months ago. It too is impressive and also sobering. The names of all those who died are stout in alphabetical order ; no rank or nationality or military standing. Just the names of the human beings who died. This view is of the "z"s. When you realise there are 500 such panels setting out the names of nearly 580,000 people the scale of suffering is intense. And those are the ones who died - countless others were wounded physically or mentally. And these were just the names from the First World War.

On a milder day we would have taken much more time to look around. Nevertheless I found some 25 names of MCADAM (the same spelling as mine).

On to Arras for a warming coffee then back to the house for a warm soup and another lovely meal but with the images from the afternoon excursion still lingering.