Pvt Cecil Alvernon MacKinon (sic)

Essex Farm ADS

Ypres and Vimy (week 35)

Our day started in Flanders Fields.  Ypres is a central town, around which battles raged throughout the Great War, some of which featured Canadians.  Here was the site of the first large-scale gas attack on the Western Front (2nd Ypres), the Battle of Passchendaele, Hill 60, etc.  Like at Verdun, there is too much to take in during one day, so we limited ourselves to two sites.  The Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 bills itself as an "experience", which is pretty accurate since it has two large-scale recreations - one of the underground dugouts and the other a trench system.  You can also pick up a real rifle and wear a German coalscuttle helmet and trench armour.  We then traveled down to Essex Farm, site of a cemetery and the remains of an advanced dressing station (ADS).  It was at this station during the 2nd Battle of Ypres that Dr. John McCrae, surgeon in the Canadian Artillery, wrote "In Flanders Fields".  Since Yolanda had lived just a few blocks away from McCrae's family home in Guelph, it was almost like a homecoming.

Great Uncle Cecil

Driving back into France, we detoured to Vimy to look for Great Uncle Cecil again.  The first time we were there, we only had the Canadian Book of Remembrance to go by, which was ambiguous as to his location.  The search is further complicated by our family's history - Cecil's birth certificate has him as "McKinnon", but his enlistment record is "MacKinnon", and his father (or grandfather, I forget which) went by "McKenna", so we needed to check them all.  Finally, after some searching on the Commonwealth War Graves British website, Craig discovered yet another spelling: "Cecil Alvernon MacKinon, born Charleston N.S."  Presumably this is a typo, but as you can see, this is how his name is inscribed on the Vimy memorial.

The mud of the Meuse

Douaumont and Verdun (week 35)

Fleury - on the church site, looking toward the school and café

The Battle of Verdun was the German offensive of 1916.  It lasted 303 days (the longest land battle in history) and cost a combined one million casualties (300,000 deaths).  Needless to say, the region is still scarred and monuments and museums are everywhere, including little pieces of strongpoints in farmers' fields where the farmers have left them be.  We mostly drove through and stopped here and there when something appeared at the side of the road.

- Douaumont Ossuary - As the name implies, it is the collected bones found on the battlefield with an enormous memorial and chapel built over it.  There is also a large war cemetery in front, and the tomb of Lt. André Thome (mayor of a local town killed at Verdun).


- Fleury-avant-Douaumont - a village mort pour la France, one of nine villages completely destroyed during the fighting and not rebuilt as a memorial.  On the cratered site there are white posts marking the routes of the streets and signposts showing where the buildings used to be, e.g., school, farm, blacksmith, church....  It is legally still a village with a mayor and an official census report (0 inhabitants).

- Jewish and Muslim Monuments - markers commemorating people of these faiths serving in the French army (both next to the Ossuary).

- Monument to the sons of Verdun - the town's memorial to its war dead, built into the side of an old fortification.

the Meuse, rowing past the Sons of Verdun

- Monument to victory at Verdun - an ENORMOUS statue in town, overlooking the Meuse.  It is topped by a statue of Charlemagne and has the text of Petain's General Order #9 encouraging his army to hold out through the German attacks.

- Tranchée des Baïonettes - A spot where 30-40 rifles (with bayonets attached) were found sticking out of the ground.  By legend, it was a trench where soldiers were buried by a shell burst just before going over the top; more likely it is a mass grave with rifles to mark the bodies.  Craig's father took several pictures when he was there in the '50s when the rifles were still visible.  They are now all gone and replaced by wooden crosses.

- not the Verdun Memorial - a museum next to Fleury-avant-Douaumont, it is undergoing extensive work and was closed.

- the Wounded Lion - marks the spot of furthest German penetration towards Verdun, in the region defended by the 130th Division.

It was a damp day, so we could imagine the mud of the trenches by extrapolating from the amount of mud that got on our pants simply walking these sites.

Verdun the town has a really ancient cathedral, dating from the 10th century.  A nice cloister is also open to visitors.  Attached (literally) to the cathedral is the old episcopal palace, now home to the World Peace Centre.

Into the Alps

Geneva (week 35)

As soon as we turned north to drive out of Milan, the Alps opened up like a grand vista before us, the haze of the previous days dissipating and revealing the glory of the mountains.  We took the most Swiss route our GPS offered, crossing into Switzerland through a 1-restaurant town (taking our last chance to have Italian pasta).  We stopped at the customs office where we were greeted in German (not what we expected on the Italian border) and picked up our highway sticker - all cars traveling the highways in Switzerland are required to pay the highway tax and display a windshield sticker showing that they have done so.

Picasso: Baigneurs à Garoupe (Bathers at Garoupe)

We stayed in Évian-les-Bains (yes, that's where Evian water comes from) on Lake Geneva because it was far cheaper than staying in Switzerland.  We then drove into Geneva for a day.  Tip to drivers: the Saint-Antoine parking lot is large and central to the old-city museums and churches.  Tip 2 to drivers: take the elevator out, because there is a signpost just as you exit showing location of various sites.  We did not exit thus, and spent 30 minutes wandering in circles trying to get our bearings (because other than the labels at the elevator, there are virtually no tourist directions).  However, once you get yourself sorted out, old-town Geneva is a marvelous place, with numerous free museums of high quality.  We chose the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, featuring floors dedicated to, among other things, prehistorical artifacts; Egypt, Rome, and Greece; and fine art.  For a free museum, the art is impressive, featuring multiple works by each of Cézanne, Renoir, Monet, van Gogh, and Picasso, plus a whole room of Rodins.  We took in the fine art plus the Egyptian and Greek antiquities exhibits.

On the left are some of the 6 000 000 index cards detailing WWI PoWs

While the others had lunch, Craig ducked into the curiously heterogenous-looking Cathédrale Saint-Pierre Genève, now no longer technically a cathedral since it is a Protestant church.  We then made our way to the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent to see their museum, recently redone in 2013.  It is an immersive and interactive place, where you can hear about the work of the Red Cross in disaster and war zones from witnesses, look at PoW records of WWI vintage (reproductions - the originals are there in humidity-controlled vaults), and even play games.  The boys' favourite was "Hurricane", where you have 5 minutes to prepare your island for an upcoming weather event by making buildings and training the residents with drills (done by tapping "cards" on a display around a big circular table .... so there's running involved unless you have a large group).

"Le Bleuet de France"

the mayor and local children lay the Commune's wreath

Puyloubier (week 18)

Although 8 May 1945 is celebrated throughout France as a street name in pretty much every city, they still have a statutory holiday on 11 November.  We decided to participate in the local commemoration event, which went as follows:

Everyone met at the Mairie and followed the veterans (carrying a variety of martial flags) to the cemetery, where there is a cenotaph listing the names of all the natives of Puyloubier who morts pour la France.  The veterans' association circulates and hands out stickers with bleuets on them (see picture), which is their equivalent of poppies.  At the cemetery we were met by the honour guard (7 active-duty soldiers from the Marseille garrison).  There followed some speeches (the mayor, the head of the veteran's association), then wreath-laying, then children from the school read the names of all the local boys who were killed in WWI and WWII.

The cemetery was well-decorated, with fresh flowers adorning most of the graves.  If there's one thing the French take seriously, it is the appearance of their cemeteries.

Searching (unsuccessfully) for Great Uncle Cecil

Yes, that's a sheep pasture between the parking lot and the Memorial

Vimy (week 3)

We stayed overnight between Lens and Douai, in the heart of the WWI battlefields.  There were signposts representing the front line at certain dates, there were Commonwealth graveyards everywhere, and of course there is the Vimy Memorial, which was the first stop of the day.  As you can tell from any pictures you may have seen, it is very large with minimal decoration.  Apart from the monument itself, there is also an interpretation centre, a series of preserved bunkers and trenches, and plenty of roped-off areas that still haven't been cleared of unexploded ordinance.  It is all cared for by employees from Veteran's Affairs Canada (their uniforms are identical to Parks Canada uniforms except for the logo).  The surrounding terrain was remediated by the French planting trees on the landscape as it was left after the war, so it basically looks like a motocross course with trees planted on it.

The Courcelette Memorial

Our second goal was to try and find the grave of Pte. Cecil Alvernon MacKinnon, 26th Bn., Canadian Infantry (New Brunswick Regiment), killed on 16 September 1916 in the Battle of Flers-Courcelette.  He was my grandfather's oldest brother.  The Commonwealth War Graves website (mirrored at Veteran's Affairs) says his cemetery is the "Vimy Memorial".  So we looked on the memorial (for all those Canadians with no known grave elsewhere), and we could not find him (we also checked under "McKinnon" and "McKenna").  So we asked at the visitor's centre, and they frowned and said they'd never heard of such a cemetery.  So we then checked the two cemeteries on-site (Canadian Cemetery #2 and Givenchy Road Canadian Cemetery), with no luck.  Unfortunately, the town also has several Canadian and Commonwealth cemeteries, with no indication where they are (e.g. we saw one on the side of a controlled-access highway and couldn't figure out how to get to it).  So we carried on to Courcelette to see the battle site (checking the Warlencourt Cemetery just up the road, but he wasn't there either).

So, no luck in finding Great Uncle Cecil.  I'll do some more research and see if we can find him in November, when we're planning to be back in the area.