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A journey of remembrance
Buried on foreign soil, thousands of miles from home, lay a darling 24-year-old linked to me through blood and memory. This was my journey to find him.
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The countryside around Ypres, Belgium, is peaceful today. The spires of Cloth Hall and Saint Martin’s Cathedral dominate the flat farmland and can be seen from kilometres away. There are vast potato fields, and horses graze lazily in green pastures. Roses and rhododendrons bloom brightly in gardens next to tidy homes with red-tiled roofs. It’s a far cry from the bombed-out horror of the no man’s land that it was 90 years ago, during the First World War. The town was all but obliterated then, with only a couple of stone walls and part of the Cloth Hall tower standing above the rubble. Its citizens returned as soon as they could, and rebuilt their homes exactly as they had been before the war took over their lives.
The Ypres area was the site of four years of gruelling warfare, and it is where my great-uncle, Henry Errol Platt, fought and died. The younger of Errol’s two sisters, Kae, was my grandmother, and I grew up listening to her stories about “darling Errol.” Her voice would ring with love and pride as she spoke of him. My grandmother was just 18 when she last saw Errol, but until she died in 1993 at the age of 96, she kept him close to her heart. In sharing stories of Errol, she made him real for me, ensuring he would not be forgotten.
I have wanted to visit Errol’s grave site in Ypres for many years to pay my respects to this family member who is part of me. Family is the link through the generations that connects us with our past and our future. Without my grandmother, I would never have known Uncle Errol, so my journey to the small Belgium town was one of thanks for her love in bringing Errol and I together.
Canada is at war again, this time in Afghanistan, and our men and women have begun dying once more. Each time one of our fallen soldiers comes home, I watch the news, both saddened and proud. I think of Uncle Errol. There were no homecoming ceremonies for him and the more than 67,000 Canadians who were killed overseas during the First World War. They were buried where they fell, so many, so fast. My trip was also my personal thanks to all of our soldiers for their honour, their bravery and their sacrifice for me, for my family and for Canada.
Every Canadian student learns about the First World War, the chlorine gas attacks, the desperate fighting in mud-filled trenches, and the bravery and skill of the Canadian soldiers that distinguished them within the Commonwealth forces. But the classroom version pales in comparison to visiting the actual sites and seeing the cemeteries – more than 150 of them in the Ypres area alone.
Looking out over the rows and rows of gravestones, I realize they aren’t just numbers in a textbook. They represent real people who lived and loved and dreamed – just like my uncle Errol. The sense of loss is overwhelming, but my small gesture of being here makes me feel a part of a larger community of remembrance.