Saturday, November 11, 2017

Entrenched in History


Next to the The Canadian National Vimy Memorial monument at the Vimy Ridge a part of the old battlefield and trenches has been preserved. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial at the Vimy Ridge is Canada's most impressive tribute overseas to those Canadians who fought and gave their lives in the World War I. The memorial overlooks the Douai Plain from the highest point of Vimy Ridge. The monument holds the names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers who were killed in France and whose final resting place is unknown. 



'Yorkshire Trench' was the name given to a front line position dug by units of the 49th (West Riding) Division near the Yser canal at Boesinghe in 1915/16. The Belgian archaeology group The Diggers worked on this site over many years and recovered much material and many human remains from the area. Their work was featured on The Forgotten Battlefield, a documentary made by BBC Producer John Hayes-Fisher. The publicity following this programme made the local authorities in the Ypres area keen on preserving some part of what The Diggers had uncovered, and in May 2003 the Yorkshire Trench & Dugout site was opened following much hard work on the part of the Diggers themselves.



Canadian soldiers in the trenches at Vimy Ridge in 1917 during the First World War.

Soldiers quietly wait in the sodden trenches of the Great War