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| CWGC Cemetery in Etaples, France - Photo copyright Melanie Wills |
Wandering through
this Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemetery at Etaples on the north
coast of France, I felt a visceral connection to “The Great War”, now ended
100 years ago.
This photo can’t
even begin to convey the enormity of the site or the profound sadness that you
feel among the nearly 11,000 WW1 graves. Seeing the ages on the tombstones is
heartbreaking. They are mostly young men and a few women - a Canadian nurse
lies on the front right - who never had much of a chance at life.
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| Dud Corner CWGC Cemetery, France - Photo copyright Melanie Wills |
There are
endless pockets of small cemeteries, especially near the battlefields. Neatly
walled, lovingly maintained, they appear like a bizarre crop amid farmers’
fields. The CWGC website allows you to do a search on fallen Commonwealth
soldiers, and pinpoint the exact location of a grave. Armed with that info, my family visited my husband’s great-uncle’s grave at Dud Corner cemetery in 2008. He
died at the age of 21 in the Battle of Loos in 1915.
But we also
mustn’t forget those who survived, and had to rebuild lives shattered in
trenches or aerial warfare. Veterans were haunted, but reluctant to talk
about their horrific experiences. They often felt guilty that they didn’t lie
alongside their comrades.
Families had to carry on without husbands, fathers,
brothers, sweethearts, and friends. With about 60,000 Canadian men killed, there
was a generation of
“superfluous” women who would never marry and so, had to make careers for
themselves. For some, the war was never truly over.
My “Muskoka Novels” pay homage to this generation tested by
extraordinary times. They’re not war stories, per se, but are about people caught
up in the cataclysm - young men who become aviators, soldiers, front-line
medics, and their wives, sweethearts, sisters who endure their own hardships as
ambulance drivers and nurses, as well as those anxiously waiting on the home
front, who also made enormous contributions. It is by seeing the war through
the eyes of individuals that we can truly understand the life-altering
consequences of that tumultuous time.
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| The author paying homage at Canada'a Vimy Memorial - Photo copyright Melanie Wills |
