Undergraduate Honours Student Travels to Beaumont Hamel
This past summer, I had the honour of being chosen to represent Memorial University at the centenary commemorations for the Battle of the Somme at Beaumont-Hamel. I had applied for the travel grant that was sponsored by E&B Travel and Trafalgar Canada with an essay that previous March. The trip, I later found out, was actually a 10-day-long venture in three countries called the “Beaumont-Hamel Freedom 100 Tour” that encompassed Newfoundland and Canadian battlegrounds during both the First and Second World Wars as well as war museums in Dieppe, Caen, and London.
Over the course of these ten days, I had some unforgettable experiences. We walked on the sands of Juno Beach and toured the German bunkers that made up the Atlantic Wall. I watched children make sandcastles in St. Aubin-sur-Mer where Canadian soldiers landed and were killed during D-Day. We visited so many Commonwealth cemeteries that I estimate I have seen over a hundred thousand immaculately-kept graves. I saw the Vimy Ridge monument stand tall and proud on a grey rainy morning. We visited Oxford Road Cemetery where John McCrae wrote In Flander’s Fields and we recited his timeless poem amongst the poppies that still grow there. We attended the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium where they pay tribute every night to all of the fallen soldiers with no known graves. During our trip, we followed the informally-known Caribou Trail and payed homage to the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in Gueudecourt, Mansières, Monchy-le-Preux, Courtrai, and of course, Beaumont-Hamel.
July 1st was the apogee of this entire experience. I am so proud to have been able to represent our university and our province at the ceremony at Beaumont-Hamel. I was a part of the Newfoundland delegation and was allowed into the dignitary reception where I chatted with retired General Rick Hillier and Honorable Kent Hehr, our minister of veteran affairs. The ceremony itself was absolutely beautiful and even the weather cooperated. All of the speeches, songs, and recitations centred on the tremendous sacrifice that the Newfoundlanders made. Afterwards, I had the chance to lay a wreath for my relative, Llewelyn Cranford, who was a bugler for the Royal Newfoundland Regiment on that fateful day and was declared missing in action.
I am incredibly thankful to have had this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it is something that will always stay with me throughout my life.