VIMY RIDGE: A CLOSER LOOK

This blog started here!
Despite the promises of good weather, as we approached Vimy Ridge off the A26 the clouds were gathering and as well as threatening rain there was a cold wind picking up across the ridge and the Douai plains. The first impression was that the twin towers of the memorial resembled something from Lord of the Rings (a prototype design for Isengard perhaps?) and set against the darkening sky seemed to be bathed in an eerie white glow.


The architect, Walter Seymour Allward, searched for 2 years to find a stone with the luminescence and colour he wanted which was eventually dug out of an ancient Roman quarry near Seget in Croatia and transported to the site between 1927 and 1931. Apart from it’s brightness (the memorial having been renovated and restored on 9 April 2007 to mark the 90^th anniversary of the battle), three things hit home as we made our approach.

Firstly, of course, it’s sheer size. The path brings you to the back of the memorial, but once you have climbed the stairs and found your way to the front you are presented with a wall just over 7 metres high, representing an impenetrable defence. The two towers rise 30 metres above the wall and seem to suggest (at one and the same time) something which has been knocked down, and something that is rising up. A ruin, and a reaching out. They are intended to symbolise France and Canada standing side by side, one bearing the maple leaf and the other the fleur-de-lis. Unity in sacrifice.

Secondly, for all it’s size, the memorial is actually incredibly simple - plain even. Most of the surface area is given over to the carved names of the fallen, but with no real ornamentation. Allward presents the 11,285 names as a seamless and continuous list around the base of the monument rather than the horizontal listings of the Menin Gate. The relative simplicity of the memorial reflects both the bareness of the landscape (beautiful though it is today) and also the singularity of its purpose as a structure: for all is artistic merit, architectural and structural ingenuity, and the incredible feat of organisational planning that brought it to be, it is first and foremost a simple record. Names. People. Lives.

Thirdly, of course, you cannot help being struck by the 20 carved figures – some more easily seen than others. My immediate sense was that the statues drew me in, and almost compelled me to look up, in fact to look up to the very limit of my vision, and beyond. But just as there is the sense of it is something ‘fallen down’ and ‘rising up’, there is a marked difference among them. Their eyes are either cast down, or raised up to the sky. Not one of them meets your gaze as you look at the memorial. It’s almost as if you are being invited to make a choice.

Looking down from the front wall, standing centrally and carved from a single 30 tonne block of Seget limestone is Mother Canada (or Canada Bereft). Clearly she is modelled on the mater dolorosa of Christian art, and represents the young nation mourning over its lost sons. Immediately below, on the battlefield itself, is a tomb bearing a Brodie helmet (itself now an icon synonymous with the First World War) and a sword draped in laurel branches. Mother Canada looks down on the fields of devastation, but more significantly she looks towards the east, and the rising of a new dawn.

On the western approach to the monument flanking the steps, are the figures of the Mourning Parents (reputedly modelled on Michaelangelo’s statues on the Medici tomb in Florence, Italy) 

Vimy Ridge is a national memorial, but also a family one, depicting the grief of every mother and father. 

Returning to the eastern wall, at each corner is a group of figures know collectively as The Defenders, embodying Canada’s role and intention in the conflict: The Breaking of the Swords is to the south, and Sympathy for the Helpless to the north. I was aware as we wandered around that there was little about the figures which suggested triumph. Exaltation perhaps, but not in any sense of victory.


Originally the southern figures were to be focused on a German helmet being crushed underfoot, but Allward rejected the concept as too militaristic. Instead, as two idealised figures look heavenward, a third crouches beside them and breaks his sword in two. As a war memorial, it is unusual: it is not the enemy that must be defeated, but war itself. 


The figures to the north show one man looking heavenward in defence of the sick and hungry who shelter beneath him.

At the base of the two towers, and in effect uniting them, is The Spirit of Sacrifice. A young dying soldier falls back against the stone as if crucified. His torch has been taken up by another, his comrade. It is understood to be a reference to the poem In Flanders Fields by the Canadian military doctor, Major John McCrae. On 2 May, 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres, his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed by an exploding shell. The chaplain was on duty elsewhere and so McCrae conducted the burial. It is believed that later that evening he began the draft for his now famous poem.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The torch, held aloft draws the eye to the top of the towers to the Chorus – figures positioned at the limit of our sight and at the point where earth and heaven ‘meet’. To the east are the personifications of Hope, Charity, Honour and Faith; to the west Truth and Knowledge. Above then all stand Justice and Peace, modelled in a similar fashion to Allward’s Truth and Justice outside the Supreme Court in Ottowa. At the highest point of the monument, Peace holds the torch aloft. Just as the memorial shines on the top of the ridge, it is the light of peace to which we are drawn, and which stands as the highest, noblest point of the whole region.