Vimy and WWI

We toured Vimy ridge, the visitor center and went through the tunnels and the trenches.  The Vimy memorial shows mother Canada looking down on the graves of her lost sons.  The site itself has been kept as it was immediately after the war.  So you cannot walk in the fields around the memorial as there is still live munitions in the ground.  The grass does not grow too high though as there are sheep grazing to take care of that. The weight distribution of a sheep allows it not to set off any of the unexploded shells, not yet anyway!  It is an amazing site to see.  The Vimy memorial is brilliant.  There is a picture of the memorial in its bright white stone for all to see.  The memorial has names of those that were killed at Vimy but with unknown graves.  We did find the name of my former bosses uncle there.  This is also where my grandfather Henry fought and almost lost his life.  We also visited Passchendaele which was a nasty, bloody, muddy fight where about 16,000 Canadians lost their lives.  The memorial of the brooding soldier at St Julian is where one of the first gas attacks of WWI happened with the loss of about 2,000 Canadians.  As well seeing John McRae's dressing station was inspiring.  For those that don't know this was the Canadian who wrote the poem In Flanders Fields after losing his friend Alex.  This man Alex is immortalized on the Menin Gate in Ypres.  This is the gate where the names of all the lost soldiers with no known graves of all the Allied forces is located.  Each night in the town of Ypres at the Menin gate at eight o'clock they hold  the Last Post ceremony that honors those that fought and died for the town's liberation.  We stood and watched this grateful town and the people who still remember.  We also saw where the Calgary Highlanders fought at Kitcheners Wood.  These are inspiring sites which we all as Canadians should be proud of.  This is where Canada became a nation.