Somme battlefields: war in a peaceful land

Sombre at the Somme

I don't really like it when Americans and English comedians joke about how the French always surrender in a war. And until the USA or the UK have suffered as much by war and invasion as France has, I think those jokes have no basis. It's very easy to defend yourself when you live on an island, or across the ocean.

Traveling through the battlefields of Verdun, the Marne and the Somme is really a moving experience. How can this peaceful green land, with its cornfields and farms and cows have been a scene of such devastation and carnage, just a century ago?

The battlefields of the Somme are incredibly moving, with their serene military graveyards, austere monuments and acres of white crosses dotting the landscape around Péronne. Some of the memorials are incredibly beautiful, like the Canadian memorial at Vimy. A stunning man-made cliff of marble that rises up from the edge of a hill, crowned with impressive sculptures. Not just a place of memory and contemplation, but also a great work of art.

One of the first memorials I visited was the Anzac memorial near Villers-Bretonneux. And I am not ashamed to say that I had tears in my eyes, to realize just how far these young men had traveled, to die for a war that was never theirs, to protect values that were not worth protecting. What a colossal, devastating waste of human life.


And every cross, every name on the marble walls represents so much more grief. The parents, the siblings, the friends of the 'glorious dead'... each cross I counted meant maybe a dozen broken hearts. The scale of suffering completely overwhelmed me, even though the sun was shining, birds were chirping and the flowers were everywhere.

The messages on the crosses were harrowing. Mourning parents trying to make sense of the senseless killing, holding on to hollow phrases and empty prayers to a God they could no longer believe in. Meaningless words about duty, honor and glory that barely hid the immense sadness behind them.And then I saw it: a cross with a personal message from despairing parents who weren't able to come up with a brave lie or some empty platitude. 'Another life lost. Hearts broken, and for what?'

There, under the Picardie sun, I let my tears flow freely, mourning for a soldier whose name meant nothing to me, feeling the loss of parents I did not know.

I challenge everyone to travel through the battlefields of France, and come away still holding the childish notion that wars can be won, and that there is such a thing as good versus evil.

There isn't. There's just death and despair... hearts broken.
And for what...