| We cut across to the other Pas de
Calais autoroute at St Omer, and then down towards Lens and Arras. About halfway between the two, I asked
Sophie to turn off through the countryside and into the
hills. Here, the war cemetries came thick and fast, so
much so that they were barely worthy of mention, although
I did point out a large German one. We were in the midst
of the World War I battlefields. As we drove into a gloomy pine forest, I annoyed Sophie by feeding a Ministry of Sound CD into the car stereo. She said I was putting dance music on to deliberately break the atmosphere of sadness and loss. She was right. When it finished, I replaced it with a Chicane CD, which seemed to suit the mood better, and so I was drawn into a feeling of melancholy, where she already was. It seemed to satisfy her that I too was now quiet, and reflecting upon mortality. We climbed through the forest onto
Vimy Ridge. All around, the clearings were uneven,
because they had been left just as they were on the
morning of 11th November 1918, when the end of the War
was declared. We came out into the open, the pattern of
trenches all around scattered with sheep, and ahead of us
was one of the most extraordinary momenti mori I
know - the Canadian Memorial.
|
