A rant about what makes an adequate memorial or cemetery. And after two weeks of visiting, we should know.
I felt I should write something, and it turned into this - a megadiscussion about the various markers and memorials in France and Canada.
The question I kept coming back to again and again was who exactly are memorials for? Are they erected for the dead, or are they for survivors?
Siegfried Sassoon thought the Menin gate was terrible – I rather liked it. Then again, I haven’t spent three muddy years having my buddies shot…which might drastically change your perspective on “war rhetoric” – pro rege, pro patria and all that. You lost your family, your legs, whatever – well done, say the government, have a medal and a memorial. Now go away. It’s such a careful balance between comforting the living and not doing too large a disservice to the dead by assuming they all had noble dying words, and were taken into heaven by a line of light.
Below, I’m going to be using the word “favourite” rather liberally. I can’t think of a better way to put it – “I’d rather be buried here”, “It’s most suitable”, “It helps us mourn more efficiently”…
Tiepeval was my favourite of the memorials. It wasn’t trying to make a statement like the Caribou, or be a work of art as at Vimy. And the actual design was so appealing. It’s big, you can see it from a distance. But once you get close up, it’s like being in a building – think an Italian villa or something. It’s got corridors and plazas, adjoining rooms and massive windows looking out on the surrounding countryside. And every wall is covered floor to ceiling in names. It forces your eye perfectly – you’re looking at names of the missing, names of the battles, or out of the windows at the battle itself.
My memory isn’t good enough to remember any inscriptions, but it felt free from the assumption that every man was a martyr. It was simply a lovely place to be – I could easily have spent far longer wandering around. Something Otak picked up on was the monuments which listed the soldiers with the people they fought with, instead of in alphabetical order. There was also something very British about the red brick. Far more subtle than having a big Caribou anyway.
Look, it’s not that I didn’t like the Caribou. I get as excited about bronze animals as anyone – remember the bronze buffalo outside the Buffalo Grill restaurant? And I’m not a holier-than-thou annoyance who thinks everyone has to be silent and morose at memorials. I’m always up for a smile, no matter the surroundings. But nothing about the Caribou focused your mind on…actually, what was it commemorating? Though I did like the use of height – you had a great view of the actual battlefield. Mr Robertshaw’s instruction before the trip was to make sure we look at the field, and not just the statues.
Brass animals always remind me a bit of Sales. Sales is a local shop which sells…junk. You know someone a) hates you or b) only got something last minute if they get you a present from Sales. It’s not that it doesn’t sell interesting stuff…it’s just things no one in their right mind would want. Wall-boats, incense sticks, curtains, dragon statues, dolls, cheap easy listening CDs, dream catchers and ugly art no one in their right mind wants – a bronze kissing couple, a bronze motorbike, a badly painted bronze Budda, a bronze Native American bust…
That particular Native bust was very much on my mind on the walk around Ottowa. I liked the idea of having a First Peoples-specific monument (although surely this is promoting division if you feel the need to say “and the First Peoples ALSO fought”, instead of leaving it implicit in the Canadian memorial that they were there – “all these Canadians fought together”). Anyway, on the top it had this rather tacky guy wearing feathers, with a wolf and eagle and stuff. Everyone else on the trip thought it was lovely, but I’m sorry…I have seen something virtually identical in Sales, and it only cost about £6. With this in mind, I had trouble taking it very seriously.
See what I mean by memorials being a tricky balancing act? As soon as you make it a work of art, you’re inviting an artistic response as well as an emotional one. As such, the Passchendaele memorial deserves a special mention. It’s just a man-sized slab on a slightly raised platform, made out of plain stone. On the sides, carving in English and French tell us what the stone is marking. They’ve planted a few maple trees, and put arrows pointing the direction of nearby special spots. At the time I thought it was a bit so-so, but in retrospect it serves its purpose far better than many of the more “arty” spots.
Vimy was on the other end of the scale. I understand most people had issues with it for not displaying the names prominently enough, for not making the men the focus. An emotional response. But for me, it was such a statement of art I couldn’t help but judge it aesthetically…and frankly, it’s a bit of a mess. Long distance it makes an amazing I impression. Like Passchendaele, it marks the point our heroes were trying to get to – but its size means you can see it all the way from the car park, so when you do the walk up towards it you always have the objective in sight. Focuses your mind wonderfully on how fun it would have been to get up there under attack. Personally, the shape also suggested to me the twin towers of the World Trade Centre – obvs not deliberately, but it was another thing I had in mind. So far, so moving. It’s only when you get close up I had problems – and it wasn’t anything to do with the missing.
The Vimy memorial is an exposed white platform, with two massive white pillars reaching up for miles. Almost growing out of this base are allegorical figures carved larger than human size, in a very Classical style. And ‘twas here I had the issue. The statues were…badly placed…take “Canada mourning”. You can get right up close from behind, and almost see her nose if you sit on her wall. But to see her from the front, you need to go down several sets of stairs…from where you are far too low down to appreciate her properly. The central, slightly Christlike figure, is up a set of stairs set between the pillars. But close enough to touch him, you again can only take in a tiny portion of it – and yet far enough away to see detail you are again too low down. And as for the ones at the top…Out of the twenty(?I think) figures, only one could be seen from all angles and with sufficient detail. The reclining man on the right as you approach.
Of course, it made up for it by the actual field being so interesting – we got to go into the underground tunnels which had been dug beneath the battlefield. Apparently they’re all over the place – we only saw a small part. It was actually quite cosy down there – but I felt seriously sick when I came back out and realised how far we had travelled under the ground. And all the corridors off the route were disconcerting – if you got lost down there, then you’d be gone for a long time…
By far the most interesting monument we saw all tour was the Canadian memorial to peace, for the novelty more than anything else. The walk up to the actual monument was a path surrounded by mock ruins, covered in ivy. Surrounded by high walls, it had a really good war-zone atmosphere. Or is this my art getting in the way again? – I have a love for broken up buildings, I think they’re truly fascinating – and a genuinely overrun building would have had the camera out for hours.
The best “overrun” experience was the Dieppe museum, THE museum of the trip. It was completely free from this dogmatic, revisionist “this was a glorious sacrifice made by our boys from Canada!” Some of that’s nice, sometimes, but after a week of the war rhetoric it was starting to wear a little thin. Hence my love for this place – it was a factual place, with honour and respect as important as telling the right story. It was even willing to poke fun at it – showing a German newspaper and English newspaper next to each other, both equally exaggerated. The German one says “Major invasion force repelled!” I can’t remember quite what the Brit one said…but it certainly wasn’t “Pointless massacre in Dieppe!” Not bad for a town which still holds a massive amount of respect for the Canadian forces, to come up with such a beautifully balanced historical experience. They even had some German veterans interviewed for their video, which I thought was marvellous.
This was an old-school, traditional museum. Everywhere else we went attempted to be flashy and interactive, but this was the best experience by far. The Canadian War Museum went to great architectural lengths to try and convey the experience of war by using slopey floors and gungy metal. But if location is a vital part of the museum experience, what can beat Dieppe? Settled in a run down, turn-of-the-century theatre, decorated with naked nymphs, cornucopias and lots of gold. They made brilliant use of the circular shape of the auditorium, and had a great display of veteran photos on the stage itself. But the chill atmosphere (I swear it was colder inside than out. And there were definitely ghostly winds blowing around, I could see the flags moving) in a place which was once so happy, golden and filled with music and applause spoke to me far more than the artificial attempt to create a mood in the CWM.
I suppose I feel the same way about all this as I do about my movies (and war movies are a memorial of sorts). I hate the ones pushing a message – the more free from dogma, the more it gives me room to think. And I like atmosphere better than all.
So with no further ado, onto the cemeteries. My favourite was definitely Langemarke German cemetery. But to understand why, I’ll first attempt to describe my dislike for the CWGC graveyards.
The CWGC were set up to guard and preserve Allied graves for all eternity. A noble mission, which makes the inscription “their name liveth forevermore” seem scarily accurate. I can just see Earth being blown up, and the human race getting space age, and the CWGC purchasing a planet to turn into one huge cemetery…
There were a lot of things that just rang a bit false for me. When you think that everyone buried there had as varied an opinion on what makes a good memorial as you and I, then there’s something a bit imposing about the way they go about it.
The impersonality of it. In death, the officers and men are all lumped together – which I approve of – but looking at all those identical gravestones in lines, I can’t help but think of identical uniforms in rows. They died as soldiers, were buried and remembered as such. Siegfried Sassoon – as would any pacifist who just wanted to get home – would have been annoyed if he’d been dumped in a line, and that his name would live “forevermore” as a piece of war dead. Something also of their work in Canada and the States – zooming in on innocent local cemeteries, mossy and overgrown and polishing one headstone gleaming white. On the one hand, it makes an impression – normal men pass out of memory, but as a soldier you’re just one cut above the rest. You’re going to live in glory forevermore. Can you see where I’m coming from? Something seems a bit too dictatorial for my liking.
Perhaps it’s just a lack of atmosphere? Perhaps it’s too shiny, or too imposing. You ARE the glorious dead, you DID die a hero, now here’s a nice Christian cross of sacrifice for you. It has to be uniform, otherwise the whole project would fall apart – but the lack of variety makes me uncomfortable. A uniform army in life, and a uniform army in death. You can just feel the pacifists seething below the ground. Tell me someone else thought the cyber-army of gardeners were a tad sinister? You will be upgraded…
As such, Langemark made a big impression on me, perhaps ‘twas just the relief of being away from all that shiny white. Or just getting away from the rhetoric – after all, as the Germans were the bad guys, they didn’t die bravely for their beliefs…
Now of course that’s ridiculous – you can’t measure the “goodness” or “badness” of a country. They’re all about as equally corrupt when you look up close – but the German sites were free from that sort of speech which makes survivors so happy, and Siegfried Sassoon so cross. I said above I like atmosphere above dogma. All judgements of this sort are irrational – I dislike methodical neatness for neatness’ sake, and I like trees. No wonder I loved grassy Langemark, with leaves trod into the ground, like walking through a forest. It really gave you room to think – after all, the Germans were no less brave, or patriotic. Yet you could (if you wished) turn up with trumpets and glory in your head. It’d be much nicer to cry there, and certainly nicer to be buried.
I said it was irrational. I like trees. I’d like to be buried under one, and have birds poop on my grave, and have a family of snails live on it, and leaves land on it. I saw a lot of snails on one headstone in a CWGC graveyard, and reflected that they’d all be bleached away the next time an inspector turned up, as would all the stringy spider webs and the places where the flowers had overgrown their patches by more than the stated distance.
By far my favourite observation about the cemeteries, however, was us. At Tyne Cot, everyone was silent. It was a very white place, with a lot of dead people. And heaven forbid, no one was going to walk between the graves – we might step on a body! By the end, we’d become so desensitised that we were happy to hop between rows and chat away. Interesting distinction. Another interesting spot was how much quieter everyone was near graves than on the sites of actual massacres. Something in the mind allowed us to have a chat and a giggle on Dieppe beach, on Juno beach, at the Caribou monument at the Somme, on the actual field of Vimy, on the walk up to Passchendaele. Just an interesting spot. I felt that when there was no one else there who might want quiet, it was acceptable to smile in graveyards. We were following the story of a young man named Horrell. We found his grave and being halfway through the trip, no one batted an eye at standing on top and talking about the most random things. Disrespectful? Yes for the living, no for the dead. It’d be shocking if you were Horrell’s great grandson. But for Horrell himself? Well, I’m not in a position to judge. But if I had been killed before I was 30, in a world which seemed nothing like it should be and which might end any day, I figure it’d be nice to have a bunch of idiot teens giggling near my grave, just to remind me that the world went on.
See the problems that arise? I like dirt and chaos. Bury me where plants will overrun the headstone; and please no one be cod-respectful and silent just because you feel you should. That’s a big personal judgement. The CWGC has made another judgement on behalf of the dead that that’s unacceptable for soldiers. So who are memorials for, the living or the dead? An example: unknown soldiers. The CWGC dead are buried with all the information we have – if they don’t have a name, at least they put they were a soldier, their rank and company if they can work it out from the bits left behind. Usually they slap a cross on it as well. The French do it differently. They have a grey cross, and on the front they put a plaque on the front with a single word: “INCONNU”. Both have their charms and merits. I can’t decide between them. But which would you prefer if it was a member of your family? And which would you prefer if it was you?
…told you it was a fine line…
- Unmutual (feat. Siegfried Sassoon)
