- 5/2/2025
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00This is the War Memorial in Stratford, Ontario, and it's typical of all the War Memorials
00:15across Canada, in every village, in every town, and in every city.
00:19These memorials are gateways to the First World War.
00:24Unfortunately, most Canadians have forgotten the First World War, and they don't realize
00:28that it was the greatest and most traumatic episode in our history.
00:35400,000 Canadians went overseas between 1914 and 18, and 60,000 died for King and Empire.
00:58000VI
00:59000VI
01:005000
01:01000VI
01:02Common
01:035000
01:04000VI
01:05750
01:07000VI
01:0700ARI
01:13serum
01:13Mont
01:27November 11th, 1918.
01:39The last guns fall silent on the Western Front.
01:45The great war is over.
01:52Delirious with joy, millions of civilians and soldiers
01:56surge into the streets, but 9 million men are dead,
01:59and 20 million have been maimed.
02:02On November 11th, for survivors like Victor Wheeler,
02:05four years of slaughter have come to an abrupt end.
02:11We troops were suddenly tired and inexplicably drained
02:15of purpose and spirit.
02:17It was an insipid, stunned feeling, or lack of feeling,
02:21like being shocked by a high-explosive shell.
02:23Who could be expected to feel the joy of peace
02:27when our closest buddies were gone?
02:30Our scarred minds and hearts wondered
02:32what lay beyond the peaceful Western horizon.
02:35The future for us was but another no-man's land,
02:39and we were reluctant to go over the top
02:41into the treacherous unknown.
02:54By signing the armistice,
02:56the German government recognizes defeat.
02:59But millions of shocked and bewildered German soldiers
03:02simply pack up and head for home.
03:05Many swear bitterly they have not been defeated.
03:08The armistice is a betrayal.
03:14History will recognize that we fought
03:16as no people ever fought before.
03:18We stand in the memory of our dead,
03:20who are holy to us,
03:21and we believe ourselves entrusted
03:23with the true and spiritual welfare of our people.
03:26So long as the blade of a sword
03:28will strike a spark in the night,
03:30may it be said,
03:31Germany lives,
03:32and Germany shall never go under.
03:33In four years' fighting,
03:40two million German soldiers have died.
03:43One survivor,
03:44stunned by Germany's sudden collapse,
03:47is a 29-year-old corporal.
03:49When he hears of the armistice,
03:51he throws himself down and weeps.
03:54His name, Adolf Hitler.
03:57When peace is declared,
03:59the 100,000 men of the Canadian Corps
04:01also receive a shock.
04:04They will not be going home.
04:06The 1st and 2nd Divisions
04:08are ordered to occupy Germany.
04:10As they pass over the Rhine,
04:13General Arthur Currie,
04:14the commander of the Canadian Corps,
04:16takes the salute.
04:22With the Corps is Agar Adamson
04:25of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
04:28Dear Mabel,
04:32all our methods are those of an invading army,
04:35less looting and the actual firing
04:37of live ammunition.
04:39I think the Germans,
04:40who have lived in comfort here for years,
04:42should all be marched through
04:43the devastated parts of Belgium and France
04:46to make them realize
04:47what the people have suffered.
04:48I have not the slightest spark of feeling,
04:50but that of hate for any German.
04:52Ever thine,
04:54Agar.
04:54In France and Belgium,
05:01the German invasion
05:02had laid waste
05:03to more than 1,000 square kilometers
05:05of countryside,
05:06often leaving not a single building standing.
05:09And in the fighting,
05:101,700,000 Frenchmen died,
05:13and the British Empire
05:14lost over a million men.
05:15We're in Luce British Cemetery,
05:22one of the 1,000 constructed
05:24British Commonwealth War cemeteries
05:26in France.
05:27And we're here because this is unique
05:30in terms of what it represents
05:32and how it shows how the cemeteries
05:35were designed and laid out
05:36during the 1920s.
05:38This cemetery itself
05:40was only about 40 graves
05:41in July 1917.
05:42Then after the war,
05:44they decided that they were going
05:45to bring in all the bodies
05:47from the surrounding battlefields.
05:49One of the other things
05:50that they were working on
05:51was, of course,
05:51they were all wooden crosses
05:53and sometimes private memorials.
05:55And one of the first principles
05:56of the War Graves Commission
05:57was universality of treatment.
05:59You can always see,
06:00regardless of the rank,
06:01regardless of the standing
06:02in the community,
06:03everyone has the same headstone.
06:05The grave here
06:06of Lieutenant Hawken,
06:07you can actually see
06:08what was probably
06:10his original stone.
06:11But it wasn't permitted
06:13to remain,
06:14so someone looks like
06:15they've broken it off
06:16and put it in front
06:16of the new headstone.
06:19All the soldiers
06:20who died in the war
06:21and were buried
06:21would be put in
06:22permanent war cemeteries
06:24so their sacrifice
06:25would be remembered forever.
06:27And what happened here
06:29is, of course,
06:29they replaced the cross,
06:33the wooden cross,
06:34usually with a Portland headstone,
06:36and they laid out
06:37and landscaped
06:38the whole cemetery
06:39to look very beautiful.
06:40Even as the bodies
06:45are being collected
06:46from the battlefields,
06:48the ground freezes.
06:49It is, many say,
06:51the coldest winter in memory.
06:54With the winter
06:55comes another plague,
06:57the Spanish flu,
06:58spreading death and fear
06:59among the troops,
07:00crowded in military camps.
07:04Transferred to England,
07:05Will Bird and his buddy Tommy
07:07celebrate surviving
07:08two years of the toughest
07:09fighting on the Western Front.
07:17Tommy aroused me at noon
07:18and said he was feeling feverish.
07:20I had no luck on the telephone.
07:22Always a nurse answered
07:23and said the doctors
07:24had more than they could handle
07:25because the flu epidemic
07:26was raging.
07:28So out I went
07:29and finally found a doctor.
07:31He looked a tired man
07:32but came with me
07:33and in half an hour
07:34Tommy was on his way
07:35to a hospital.
07:37The next afternoon
07:38I tried to visit Tommy.
07:40The doctor came back quickly
07:41and his message stunned me.
07:43Tommy had died that morning.
07:45The world crashed around me.
07:50It is a cruel irony.
07:52The Spanish flu kills more people
07:54than the Great War itself.
07:55In a few months,
07:56more than 20 million die.
07:59It is finally time
08:00the government realizes
08:01to get the men back to Canada.
08:05Encomadeering the biggest ocean liners,
08:07the Canadians finally set sail,
08:09homeward bound.
08:12Below deck,
08:13trying to sleep,
08:15Will Bird cannot escape the war.
08:17It returns as a nightmare.
08:18I seem to be in an atmosphere
08:24rancid with stale sweat
08:25and breathing.
08:26Then from overhead,
08:28the machine gun's note,
08:30louder, higher, sharper,
08:32as it swept bullets
08:33over the shell crater
08:34in which I hugged the earth.
08:36And again,
08:36the long-drawn whine
08:38of a common shell,
08:39its heart-shaking explosion,
08:41the seconds of heavy silence.
08:44Then the first low wail
08:45of the man down
08:46with a blood spurt and wound.
08:47It was too much.
08:50I got up and dressed.
08:57To my amazement,
08:58there were other dark figures
08:59near the rail.
09:01No one spoke
09:01of that we were touching shoulders.
09:04All at once,
09:04the watchers stirred,
09:06tensed, craned forward.
09:08It was the moment
09:08for which we had lived,
09:10which we had envisioned
09:11a thousand times.
09:12Far ahead, faint,
09:14but growing brighter,
09:15we had glimpsed
09:16the first lights
09:17of home.
09:19But those at home
09:20would never understand us.
09:23Something inexplicable
09:24would make us unable
09:25to put our feelings
09:26into words.
09:27After four years,
09:36constantly under fire,
09:38comforting the wounded
09:39and dying,
09:40Canon Frederick Scott
09:41is badly wounded himself.
09:44And it is only in May 1919
09:46that he can return home
09:47with the troops.
09:48All along the decks
09:55of the great vessel
09:56were 2,700 men.
09:59On their young shoulders,
10:01the burden of empire
10:02had rested.
10:04Never again will one
10:05see the great battalions
10:06marching on the battle-plowed
10:07roads of France
10:08and Flanders.
10:10All that is over.
10:12I told them
10:14what they had done
10:15for Canada
10:15and what Canada
10:17owed them.
10:18I asked them
10:19to continue to play
10:20the game out here
10:21as they had played it
10:22in France.
10:22Then, telling them
10:23to remove their caps,
10:24I pronounced the benediction,
10:26said goodbye, boys,
10:28and turned homewards.
10:29Among the boys
10:34coming off the ship
10:35are 83,000 sick,
10:38wounded, and crippled.
10:41One of them
10:42is Private Donald Fraser.
10:44His flesh has been
10:45ripped apart
10:46by high explosives
10:47and his shoulder shattered.
10:49He is now
10:50a very different man
10:51from the proud adventurer
10:52who enrolled in 1914.
10:54Desperately needing help,
10:56he writes humble letters
10:57to the authorities
10:58explaining how he was
10:59and how the war
11:00destroyed his health.
11:03From personal experience
11:05of shells exploding
11:06close to me,
11:07the concussion
11:07in some cases
11:08affected my breathing,
11:10which I presume
11:10means either a reaction
11:11on the lungs
11:12or heart or both.
11:13Others gave out
11:14a deafening report
11:15followed by no effect.
11:17The other explosion
11:18caused a tremendous
11:19outward pull
11:20on the tissues
11:20of the body
11:21as if something
11:22was tearing me apart
11:23and I have the feeling
11:25that this condition
11:25of aneurysm
11:26was caused
11:27through that explosion.
11:30Like thousands
11:31of returning veterans,
11:33Donald Fraser
11:33is awarded a pension,
11:35$180 a year,
11:38enough perhaps
11:38to pay five months' rent.
11:41For the blind,
11:42the mutilated
11:43and the amputees,
11:44there are meager pensions
11:46and rapid courses
11:47of rehabilitation.
11:50Some are hidden away
11:51forever in hospitals.
11:53Incurable shell-shock victims
12:00are consigned
12:01to special institutions.
12:03Many veterans
12:04will live crippled lives
12:05and die painful,
12:07lingering deaths.
12:09Even those lucky ones
12:11who come back
12:12apparently unscathed
12:13carry hidden scars.
12:15They never leave
12:16the war behind
12:17as their wives
12:18and families
12:18soon discover.
12:19We are married
12:23to shadows,
12:23merely walking shadows.
12:25The real men died
12:26out there somewhere
12:27in Flanders.
12:28They seem to be hypnotized
12:30by the awful horror
12:31they have seen.
12:32It keeps them
12:33forever chained.
12:34In the 1920s,
12:44the scars of the Great War
12:46are still fresh
12:47in the minds of men
12:48and in the fields
12:50of Belgium and France.
12:56For four years,
12:57the richest countries
12:58in the world
12:59had used every weapon
13:00they could invent.
13:02And in a fight
13:03to the finish
13:04had saturated
13:05every meter of ground
13:06with fire.
13:17What is left
13:18in 1919
13:19is a 650-kilometer-long
13:21wasteland
13:22of churned-up mud,
13:25of trenches,
13:26of tunnels,
13:27mine craters,
13:29rusting snakes
13:29of barbed wire,
13:30gutted tanks,
13:32and bodies
13:32almost 2 million bodies
13:34lost forever
13:36or buried
13:36in makeshift graves.
13:42Among them,
13:44almost a million
13:44British Empire dead
13:46and 60,000 Canadians.
13:50The battlefield
13:51was literally
13:52strewn with isolated
13:53graves
13:53and small cemeteries.
13:55So in the post-war years,
13:57once they acquired
13:58the land,
13:59they had labour companies
14:01going out
14:01and bringing in
14:02all the isolated bodies.
14:10The labour companies
14:12or exhumation companies
14:13had an incredibly nasty job
14:14because they had to go around
14:16and find the graves.
14:20Now, they had a registration plan
14:22if any of the graves
14:22had been registered,
14:23but there were thousands,
14:24literally tens of thousands
14:25of graves
14:26that were not registered,
14:27and they'd often go digging
14:28at one cross
14:29and they would find
14:30ten bodies underneath it.
14:33And of course,
14:33some of these bodies
14:34in 1919
14:34would still have flesh on them
14:36and it was just
14:37a nasty experience.
14:38A lot of the identification
14:39was missed
14:40because the identification disc
14:41would have been driven
14:42into the flesh
14:43on the impact
14:44of the death
14:45if it was a shift
14:46from a shell
14:46or, you know,
14:48who knows.
14:49So they had a number
14:49of schemes they used to use.
14:51One was looking for rat holes.
14:53Of course,
14:53they'd find a rat hole
14:54and if there's any equipment
14:55in it,
14:55they'd start to dig around it
14:56and start to bring out
14:57the bodies.
14:59And these exhumation companies
15:00worked from 1919 to 1921
15:02and they brought in
15:03about 125,000
15:05British Commonwealth soldiers.
15:07We're not counting
15:07French or Germans.
15:10So these guys
15:11were working
15:11in horrible conditions
15:12and dangerous conditions.
15:13Some of the crews
15:14were killed.
15:15They'd be cooking
15:16their tea up
15:16over a,
15:17little do they know it,
15:18an unexploded,
15:19high-explosive shell.
15:24Even today,
15:25the work of clearing
15:26the battlefields continues
15:27as bomb disposal units
15:29gather live shells
15:30that continually surface
15:32in farmer's fields.
15:34German shells,
15:35seven centimeters,
15:36seven.
15:37The British mortar,
15:39three inch.
15:41Granate mills.
15:45That's a fuse.
15:48Always a grenade.
15:49That's eight inch
15:52for the shell.
15:53So it's firing.
16:01We can see it.
16:02So it's,
16:03has some small lines.
16:05So he went through
16:06the cannon.
16:08So the fusing system
16:10is,
16:11armed,
16:13active,
16:15and by the touch
16:18of the head
16:18it can explode.
16:19In the great war,
16:21more than 900,000 tons
16:23of shells were fired.
16:2430% failed to go off.
16:27And now,
16:27hidden away,
16:28in the quiet woodlands
16:30of Belgium and France,
16:31are dozens of
16:32high-security depots,
16:33stockpiled with live munitions
16:35from more than 80 years ago.
16:37So this is one of the ammunition dumps
16:42where the ammunition,
16:45the shells,
16:45that are probably gas shells,
16:47are stored.
16:48And they're simply
16:49awaiting here
16:49the right time
16:50to be identified,
16:52just to make sure
16:52that these are actually
16:53gas shells,
16:54and then they will be dismantled.
16:57In this dump,
16:58we have approximately
16:5910,000 shells.
17:01It'll take
17:01quite some time
17:03to get rid
17:03of these shells,
17:05and we will be continuing
17:06to get rid of the shells
17:08because every year
17:09we keep finding
17:10about the same amount.
17:12And for decades
17:13and decades now,
17:15the number of shells
17:16that are found
17:17in the fields
17:18hasn't changed.
17:19So if this has been
17:20going on for decades,
17:22we may be sure
17:22that for the next few decades
17:24it'll continue.
17:24Throughout the 1920s,
17:29the work of clearing
17:30the battlefields
17:31of shells continues,
17:32as does the even more
17:34important work
17:34of recovering bodies.
17:39What they ended up with
17:40was all these
17:41incredible cemeteries.
17:44The first principle
17:45was universality of treatment.
17:48The second was
17:48every name
17:49was going to be remembered,
17:50which is why
17:50they have these cemeteries
17:52and the memorials
17:53to the missing.
17:53The third one,
17:55and the one that caused
17:55the most amount
17:56of concern,
17:57was that no bodies
17:59could be repatriated.
18:00So it didn't matter
18:01who you were
18:02or where you lived,
18:04it didn't matter
18:05if your son was killed
18:06in France,
18:06he was going to be
18:07buried in France
18:08close to where he fell
18:09and he was going to be
18:10buried with his comrades.
18:11This caused a lot of grief.
18:13You can well imagine
18:14what it was like
18:14to say goodbye
18:15to your husband in 1914
18:17or your brother in 1914
18:19and he never comes back.
18:23One Toronto woman
18:26refuses to submit
18:27to her loss.
18:28Her name is Anna Durie.
18:31Her only son,
18:32Lieutenant William Durie,
18:33had just recovered
18:34from severe wounds
18:35when he was killed
18:36near the city of Lens
18:37in France.
18:39What Anna Durie did
18:40was she requested
18:42politely and correctly
18:44a couple times
18:45in the early 1920s
18:46that her son be repatriated
18:48and she was politely
18:49turned down
18:49but she wasn't going
18:50to be deterred by this
18:51and she decided
18:52in 1925
18:54when the time was right
18:55that she was going
18:56to get her son's body home.
18:58These men here
18:59were all originally
19:00buried in Corkscrew Cemetery
19:01near Lens
19:02and when the War Graves Commission
19:04tried to obtain the land
19:05the owner wouldn't
19:07let them have it
19:08so ultimately
19:09they had to exhume
19:10all the graves
19:10including Durie's
19:11from Corkscrew
19:12and rebury them here
19:14at Luce.
19:15This is 1925
19:16and the Durie is over here
19:18she's hiring
19:19some local help
19:20and in midnight
19:21they show up
19:22in the cemetery
19:23the ground is all
19:25rough from all the
19:26exhumations being reburied
19:27and she digs up
19:29her son's grave.
19:31It's in a coffin
19:32she takes the remains out
19:33puts them in another coffin
19:34reburies the coffin
19:36and disappears.
19:38William Durie
19:39is finally buried
19:40on August the 22nd 1925
19:43in St. James Cemetery
19:44in Toronto.
19:46There he lies today
19:47next to his mother
19:48Anna Durie
19:49the woman who carried out
19:51one of the few successful
19:52body kidnappings
19:53after the Great War.
20:01Just as William Durie
20:03is finally laid to rest
20:04the boom of the Roaring Twenties
20:06is heading for its peak
20:07but some veterans
20:09can never find peace
20:10in the post-war world.
20:11Igar Adamson
20:13had been in the war
20:15from the first
20:15to the last
20:16and nearly every day
20:18he wrote his beloved wife
20:19Mabel
20:20Dear Mabel
20:24today Lieutenant Gow
20:26shot badly
20:27four men killed
20:28nine wounded
20:29dear Mabel
20:30last night
20:31under heavy artillery fire
20:32five killed
20:33eleven wounded
20:34machine gun crews buried
20:35Gray was shot badly
20:37dear Mabel
20:38280 dead Germans
20:40still huddled together
20:41as they died
20:42thousands of rats
20:43Dear Mabel
20:44Sladen killed
20:45ten officer casualties
20:47Pearson shot through
20:48lung and spine
20:48dear Mabel
20:49Everthine
20:50Haggard
20:50Papineau
20:51Sullivan
20:52Almond
20:52all killed
20:54today
20:54Well goodbye old girl
20:55I am and hope
20:57for a long time
20:57to be
20:58your forever loving
20:59and devoted
21:00Everthine
21:01Agar
21:02Haunted by the shadow
21:06of the Great War
21:07Agar is bored
21:09by peace
21:10Two years after
21:11returning to Canada
21:12he leaves Mabel
21:13moves to England
21:15and begins a life
21:16of hard drinking
21:17late nights
21:18an adventure
21:19In 1929
21:22on a flying stint
21:23Agar crashes
21:24into the Irish Sea
21:25and catches pneumonia
21:26within a few months
21:27he is dead
21:28As the funeral salute
21:31dies away
21:31Mabel writes
21:33to their son
21:33What I might have done
21:36was to have lived
21:37with him
21:38and let him be happy
21:39in his own way
21:39Then the end
21:41would have been the same
21:42only I should have
21:43no regrets
21:44I always hoped
21:46against hope
21:46that he would come back
21:47to me
21:47and lead a simpler life
21:49but it was not to be
21:51and there is a blank
21:52in my life
21:53that will never be filled
21:54The veterans
22:01of the Canadian Corps
22:02like Agar
22:03are not the only ones
22:04obsessed
22:05by the wartime past
22:06In Germany
22:08In Germany
22:08thousands of ex-soldiers
22:10embittered
22:11by Germany's defeat
22:12are drawn
22:13to a new
22:13army-like
22:14mass movement
22:15led by the little
22:16corporal
22:17who had survived
22:18the Great War
22:19Adolf Hitler
22:211931
22:321931
22:32fatally weakened
22:34by the Great War
22:35the world economy
22:36plunges into depression
22:38millions lose
22:40their jobs
22:40their homes
22:41everything
22:42one in four veterans
22:44is out of work
22:46but Will Bird
22:48who said veterans
22:49would never be able
22:50to put their feelings
22:51into words
22:51survives by writing
22:53his own wartime
22:54memories
22:55and We Go On
22:56is published in 1930
22:58A year later
23:00McLean's magazine
23:01sends Will to Europe
23:02to report on the old
23:04battlegrounds
23:0513 years after
23:07He starts at the
23:11Belgian city of Ypres
23:12where the Canadians
23:13fought their first
23:14major battle
23:15The roads team
23:18with traffic
23:19bicycles swarm
23:20on the paths
23:21reserved for them
23:22women riding
23:23into Ypres
23:23to do their shopping
23:24the whole is a picture
23:26of very prosperous
23:26farm life
23:27of activity
23:28in plenty
23:29but steady your gaze
23:31and you will see
23:32thinly hidden
23:33the lasting leer
23:34of war
23:35it is there
23:36in the pillboxes
23:37that peep at you
23:37from all corners
23:38and in the countless
23:40memorials and cemeteries
23:41that tell their own story
23:43Near Ypres
23:50in the sector
23:51known as the Ypres
23:51Salient
23:52almost a half a million
23:53men were killed
23:54and the unceasing
23:56artillery fire
23:57had churned
23:57tens of thousands
23:58of cadavers
23:59men
24:00horses and mules
24:01deep into the
24:02Flanders mud
24:03in his mind
24:05Will Bird
24:06is still in the midst
24:07of the horror
24:07of that fighting
24:08At noon
24:10we reached an area
24:11dotted with derelict
24:12tanks
24:13as we rocked
24:14one of the monsters
24:15a head squeezed
24:16out of the muck
24:17the skin peeled
24:18as though from lard
24:19a corpse long dead
24:21and frightful
24:22a few yards away
24:24were three green
24:25scummed pools
24:25white chalky hands
24:27reached out of one
24:28and from another
24:30a knee stuck up
24:31above the filthy water
24:32a tree
24:48well he said
24:48my land is richer
24:50than before
24:50it is the best land
24:52I have ever seen. My crops are the largest yet. All over those miles you hear the same
24:58story. All that blood-soaked region seems doubly productive now."
25:05Leaving behind the battlefields of Ypres, we'll drive south, out of Belgium into France,
25:11following the path of the Canadian Corps into the rolling open country of the Somme.
25:19And soon he arrives in the fields known as the Graveyard of Armies, where more than
25:23a million men died.
25:28The Germans still talk of the blood-bath of the Somme, and all the veterans agree that
25:32for terrific shell-fire, among conditions of mud and water and terrible weather, the Battle
25:37of the Somme was only exceeded in dreadfulness by the Battle of Passchendaele. All through
25:43the Somme one passes countless cemeteries, British, French, and German, until it's
25:49a great valley of the dead.
26:00In the First World War, the British Empire lost about 1.1 million men, and of that, more
26:06than half of them were missing. They decided, in an absolutely incredible decision, that every
26:12name of every soldier and sailor and airman who was killed in the war would be remembered,
26:19would be commemorated forevermore. And they decided to build the memorials to the missing.
26:24This was for all the British Empire, and we're now walking up to the Thiefvall Memorial, that
26:29commemorates 73,000 primarily British soldiers and some South Africans who were missing in
26:35the Somme fighting of 1916 and 1917. This is the most enormous and coarse and magnificent
26:44monument on the Western Front, for what it stands for. It's in a farmer's field, I should say, in the middle of the Somme battlefields. And it's just something that it's a great
26:46massive about this monument, but yet it lists the names of all the men who have no known grave who vanished on these fields.
27:03Charlie Racknell got hit by a rifle bullet, quivered, doubled up, and dropped forward, killed instantly.
27:16Bobby Bissett crawled upon the Racknell and was shot, and lies dead on top of Charlie.
27:21Grusillier was sniping steadily. Just when he was on the point of firing, a bullet got him, and he rolled
27:27completely around on his back, stone dead.
27:32These fields are always yielding all sorts of bullets and live shells, but one of the things that surprises
27:39most people is how many bones and remains that they yield. During the First World War, one of the sad
27:47things about the First World War was so many men were missing. They used to have a phrase,
27:52missing, presumed dead, died on or since, such and such a date. And what happened in this
27:57area here on the Somme is that probably 50 to 60 percent of the men killed were missing.
28:03They never identified them, or they were never found. In France alone, there are 220,000 names
28:12on memorials to the missing, and there are 110,000 unknowns buried in the cemetery, which means
28:18there are over 110,000 remains in these fields.
28:27One of the missing is Will Bird's younger brother, Steven. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Steven Bird volunteered
28:35for the 25th Nova Scotia Battalion. In September 1915, he is just south of Ypres, in the line,
28:45under German attack. The Germans blow a huge underground mine. Two men of the 25th are killed,
28:5720 wounded, and 10 reported missing. Steven Bird is one of them. His body is never found.
29:15It's a long way from Ypres to Mons, and when the trip is done, your memories and thoughts
29:20are so commingled that you hardly know the war is history. You see again the long shadowy files
29:27on the duck boards of the salient, a silhouette of steel helmets and rifle muzzles. You see long
29:33strings of mules taking ammunition. You see in memory the lorries and traffic of the great back areas,
29:40sausage balloons, battery positions, trenches at stand-to, the gutted, wired, rat-ridden spaces
29:47between the lines. Seeing most, of course, that which impressed you, seared deepest in your brain,
29:53whether it was the sleet and shrapnel of Vimy, the bloodbath of the Somme, or the terrible diarrhea
30:00of war that was known as Passchendaele.
30:03When Will Bird arrives back in Canada, letters flood into Maclean's magazine.
30:13Liberated by Will's articles, grateful veterans can share their memories.
30:18But as the world plunges further into the 1930s, the shadows left by the Great War
30:23grow darker and darker.
30:331934. The world depression reaches new depths, and the sacrifice of the soldiers of the Great War
30:46is fast fading from memory. In August, 80,000 veterans, many unemployed and most feeling betrayed
30:55by the world they fought to preserve, gather in Toronto, determined to remind the world of their service
31:01and to rekindle the flame of brotherhood.
31:05The veterans reaffirm their allegiance to King and Empire.
31:09We, the Canadian Corps, in reunion assembled, solemnly reaffirm our loyalty and allegiance
31:16to our God, to our King, to our country.
31:21Speaking for the veterans, Ken and Scott evokes the ideals of the Canadian Corps
31:26and the desolate world of the Great Depression.
31:30It was not mere blind patriotism that inspired the men of the Canadian Corps,
31:35but the world appealed to uphold justice and liberty and the brotherhood of man.
31:40Alas, my comrades, what has happened since?
31:43In the world at large, unemployment, poverty and even starvation.
31:47Where is the world that we fought to establish?
31:53One month after the Toronto Rally, other veterans celebrate their success,
31:57more than a year in power of one of their own, Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany.
32:03As Adolf Hitler triumphs in Germany, Canadians squabble over the cost of building memorials
32:23to their great war veterans, and even to their greatest victories.
32:32It was on Easter Monday, April the 9th, 1917, that the entire Canadian Corps attacked Vimy Ridge.
32:38Vimy Ridge was one of Canada's greatest victories, and as it turned out, one of the crucial battles of the First World War.
32:53And it was on Vimy Ridge that the government decided to build the Canadian National Memorial
32:58in honour of all the Canadian dead of the Great War.
33:04After the war, a committee got together, including Sir Arthur Currie,
33:07and they decided on which Canadian battlefields were going to be commemorated.
33:11They felt that Vimy was one of the great victories, for sure.
33:14It wasn't necessarily the biggest, but it was the best place for Canada's national monument,
33:19and that's why the monument's here.
33:23To build the monument, they had to clear the old First World War battlefield,
33:26and build a road system to bring up all the stone, which came from Yugoslavia.
33:31So they had to construct this massive road.
33:35Of course, there's dugouts, and there's literally thousands of shells,
33:38and, you know, all sorts of stuff.
33:41This was a dangerous place after the war.
33:43So they had to do that first, and then they started to build the bastion here.
33:46Towering over the highest point of Vimy, the twin pylon design of Toronto artist Walter Allward
33:54takes 14 years to build, requires 15,000 tons of concrete,
33:59and 6,000 tons of white limestone transported from Yugoslavia.
34:04Walter Allward personally oversees all phases of the construction.
34:11They didn't carve any of the statues and bring them in.
34:15They carved them here, and that's what's really remarkable.
34:18And when you look up the two pylons at the very top,
34:22they had to build little studios in situ,
34:27so that the sculptors could come up and carve them directly into the stone,
34:32because they're carved out of one piece.
34:33So they had all these studios up there, they had an elevator to take the sculptors up there,
34:40and they worked from plaster casts of Walter Allward's work.
34:44The original statues are half-size, and they're plastered,
34:49and you can still see them today in Ottawa, where they have the caliper marks,
34:53where the sculptors working on them were doing their measurements.
34:55After 14 years of controversy and mounting costs, the Vimy monument is ready for unveiling in 1936.
35:07More than 6,000 Vimy pilgrims board specially-chartered steamships and sail for France.
35:20And on July 26, 1936, more than 100,000 people gather at Vimy for the opening of the memorial to the battle that had taken place almost 20 years before.
35:33One of the men on the tour was my grandfather.
35:39He came back to Vimy, he had been here obviously in 1918, when he was wounded,
35:44and he came back to give a final statement, I guess, a final visit to the people who he had left behind.
35:51For him it was a very, very big issue, and after he died we found in his drawers every piece of paper from the Vimy pilgrimage,
35:57his special Vimy pilgrimage passport, he had the London Underground schedule for 1935,
36:04and he was a clerk in Belle Canada, so at that time he wasn't making much money,
36:07so to save up that much money during the Great Depression and to make this trip
36:11just shows how important this monument was to those Canadians.
36:15We raise this memorial to Canadian warring.
36:25This is the inspired expression in stone,
36:30tizzled by a skillful Canadian hand,
36:34of Canada's salute to her fallen son.
36:37In that spirit, I unveil this memorial to Canada's dead.
37:07The Vimy memorial is Canada's national memorial.
37:24But it is also in a special sense the memorial for the 11,285 Canadian soldiers
37:30who died in France and whose bodies were never found.
37:33One of those vanished soldiers was William Crossland.
37:39Will had left his young wife and son at home in Winnipeg,
37:43and at the Battle of Courcelette, Will Crossland was one of the first Canadians to go over the top.
37:50Your grandfather was missing in action at Courcelette on September the 15th, 1916.
37:56And like most men who were missing, their bodies were never found,
37:59and they're commemorated here at Vimy.
38:01This is the memorial to the missing.
38:04My grandmother was also given this.
38:08I don't know what it is, so maybe you can tell me a bit about what that's all about.
38:12This is called the next-to-kin memorial plaque, or it was known as the dead man's penny.
38:17It was sent to families after the war, 1922 around there.
38:21Every family who lost somebody, they would get one of these plaques.
38:25And the plaques are unique in that they bear the name of the man who died.
38:29So this is an individual commemoration of this particular individual, which is William Crossland.
38:35So this is unique to your grandfather.
38:37What do each of the things mean on here now?
38:40Well, you have the figure of Britannia, the British lion for the empire, the dolphin signifying life.
38:47You have the British lion down here killing the German eagle, and he died for freedom and honor, and then with his name here.
38:53Well, because your grandfather was missing in action, and his body was never found, and he died in France, he's commemorated here at Vimy.
39:07So his name is engraved on the wall around the bastion.
39:11And we'll just go and try to find it right now.
39:14Oh, yeah, there he is, look.
39:17W. William Crossland.
39:23That's all that's left of my grandfather, right?
39:28No grave.
39:30No grave. They never found his grave.
39:32And that's pretty common for First World War, unfortunately.
39:35One in three has no known grave.
39:40In 1936 at Vimy, most Canadian veterans were able to pay their last respects to their dead comrades.
39:47And come to terms with their past.
39:50But some demons of the Great War are not so easily laid to rest.
39:55Only four years after the Vimy Memorial is unveiled, another Great War veteran pays it a visit.
40:02Former German Army Corporal Adolf Hitler.
40:06Under Hitler's leadership, Germany once again, as in 1914, invades Belgium and France.
40:11And once again, Canadian civilians line up with wooden rifles and set about learning how to be soldiers.
40:19And once again, a great flotilla takes them to Europe to fight.
40:24By 1944, the Second World War is raging.
40:28And Canon Frederick Scott, who survived the First War and feared the coming of the Second, dies and is buried in Montreal on a cold, bitter January day.
40:37My comrades, where is the world we fought to establish?
40:40Where are those high principles which drew us, a mighty host, into the furnace of a war, to end all war?
40:49And six months later, in June 1944, Canadian troops land with their allies on the beaches of Normandy.
40:58It is the first step back to the old battlefields where their fathers had fought in the Great War in Flanders.
41:05Once again, as in 1914, Canadian troops helped liberate Europe.
41:09Hitler's Germany will fall.
41:11And with it, one unfinished chapter of the Great War will finally be closed.
41:20We're in Benim-sur-Mayor Canadian War Cemetery in Normandy.
41:24And we're really looking at one of the legacies of the First World War, one of the saddest legacies of the First World War.
41:29For many of the men who survived, their sons would have to come and fight again, here in Normandy and through Europe, Italy, in the air, over Germany.
41:39And many of them would die.
41:41And I think one of the saddest things is that they had to give up their sons.
41:45They scraped through themselves, and then to have another generation go off and die in rapid succession like this,
41:51with such catastrophic results, must have just been horrific for those men.
41:54This is the grave of Captain Stephen Byrd, the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, killed 8th July 1944, aged 24.
42:07The personal inscription reads,
42:09He lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and was loved.
42:15His memory remains.
42:17You can tell by reading that, it was written by a World War I veteran, and his father was Will Byrd.
42:24His memory remains.
42:27Thy years pass.
42:29Thy memory remains.
42:31Now thousands more are in graves, dead while they should yet be young.
42:36Thy years pass.
42:38Thy memory remains.
42:39Cabaret Rouge Cemetery in Northern France, near Vimy Bridge, just one of more than 2,000 First World War cemeteries and monuments, strung along the old Western Front.
43:00During the 1920s and the 1930s, grieving relatives and friends came and remembered.
43:10The café at Cabaret Rouge was always full, but today the café is gone.
43:15Almost no one comes here anymore.
43:17Except perhaps, the occasional passer-by.
43:22I started coming across these cemeteries, these immaculate cemeteries, and I was curious as to who these people were.
43:31And I started to come across a lot of Canadian graves, fellows killed on the same day.
43:37And they were absolutely amazing in the way they preserved the history.
43:41Their frozen history, and that's what I found completely fascinating about.
43:45Halfway across, the first wave seemed to melt, and we were in front headed for Fritz, who was firing wildly and strong.
43:55And as the remnants of us were nearing bombing reach, we almost as one dropped into the shell holes.
44:00Not a man was moving in no man's land, save the wounded, twisting and groaning in their agony.
44:05The men who came here in 1914-1915 were British.
44:13The men who attacked Vimy Ridge and captured Vimy Ridge were Canadians.
44:18And that transition took place in the hearts and souls of the men that were part of the Canadian Corps.
44:24And it was their ability, their pride in being members of the Canadian Corps that really created this whole concept of nationalism.
44:35An officer came down and told us that the Germans were in the wood, which we could see before us at some distance in the moonlight.
44:42I passed down the line and told them, it's a great day for Canada, boys.
44:47These words afterwards became a watchword.
44:50For the men said that whenever I told them that, it meant that half of them were going to be killed.
44:54These men were treated very, very specially.
45:01And their sacrifice was important.
45:03And that's why you have these unique cemeteries.
45:06And that's why you have all these incredible designs and the lands seated in perpetuity.
45:10And there'd been no war like it, no sacrifice like it.
45:14And they commemorated it as such.
45:15I think people forget that to get somewhere there is sacrifice.
45:20The path of freedom is paved with blood.
45:23And people don't recognize that anymore because they have the freedom.
45:26They can't relate to the concept of giving your life up for a cause.
45:31I think what's odd about history, period, is that you're standing on the ground where so much took place before you.
45:39And you can certainly feel the shadows of the great war here.
45:42You know there's ghosts walking out there.
45:44There's ghosts walking out there.
46:14There's ghosts walking in and YouTubers walking out there.
46:15There you go.
46:16Lol.
46:17Half the place is stuck on that background.
46:18That's exactly right.
46:19I think it's hard to see peopleет people.
46:20And you will see them in the manner ofism.
46:28And of course nothing should be held on that ground.
46:30You will see them down there.
46:37Minah's auddha Between Pierparks.
46:39729-8033
46:42We'll be back.
Recommended
45:12
58:50