Day Three: An Education in Arras

Happy Sunday, Family:
It is late evening in Thelus, and once again our tired troupe is gathered round our kitchen table, enjoying a late supper, sipping on a hot/cold beverage of choice, and solving the problems of the world.
This was a delicious day of emotion:

• Contentment and anticipation in the early morning, enjoying morning coffee and a stroll around town (five of six😜).  The walkers were delighted to stumble upon a memorial service in the street, and to be thanked for being Canadian and for helping save the village!
  
• Awe, sadness, pride, overwhelmedness, connection and reverence  as we visited the Faubourg-D'Amiens Memorial Cemetary in Arras, where 35,000 soldiers who gave their lives in battles in, near, and above Arrass in the last years of WW1 are buried and honoured. To touch their names on the walls of this magnificent structure was an intense privilege. And to walk among the stones, set peacefully and orderly in their rows, so perfectly juxtaposing the chaos and destruction of their time in this place one hundred years ago, was indescribable. I said hello to Marcus there, spent only a moment of my day contemplating his so short life as a son and a soldier, but I will carry him with me for some time to come. Three Sheridans are buried in Faubourg, two Brits and one Canadian, but we were sadly unable to locate them in the "rows on rows".
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Disbelief, admiration, horror, awe, frustration in the Wellington Tunels of Arrass.  Named for the regiment of New Zealanders who turned abandoned chalk mines under the town into 20 km of tunnels that housed up to 24,000 men and were used as the launching point for the April 9th, 1917 battle, these tunnels are a memorial of a different kind. We traveled 20 metres underground to walk in the echo of the footsteps of the men who lived there, worked there, ate there, and prepared there to give their lives in a fight for freedom. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Humble gratitude for the lives they gave, and for enduring as heroes the war they never asked for - farmers, fishers, bankers, miners, doctors, brothers, fathers, sons.
  
  
  

Of course, other emotions snuck into our day - impatience, aggravation - little feelings that remind us we are human, fallible... and named Wes! 😉 Couldn't resist. He insulted Maxine (our Google Maps GPS girl) once too often. 

So, tomorrow we endeavour to take on the Vimy Memorial in the morning AND travel to Beaumont-Hamel on our drive south. Something tells me Day Four will test our emotional limits as well. 

Sleep well. Maybe say a little prayer of thankfulness for the gift of freedom we enjoy. 

xoxo