Photo Gallery

If you are interested in obtaining military records of First World War veterans, please feel free to download and/ print the order form and instructions. (please note this is an Adobe "pdf" file.

Before ordering, you should search the data base at
http://www.archives.ca/02/02010602_e.html
to obtain the regimental number and file location.

World War I Photo Gallery & Poetry
(all photographs taken by John Stephens)
page 4 - Guests' Photographs and comments

(please click on the "thumbnails" for full sized photographs)

The following pictures were taken both in 2002 and on a more recent trip in October of 2005.

In Flanders' Fields

by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Dulce Et Decorum Est
By Wilfred Owen

In Flanders' Fields Now
By Edna Jaques, 1918

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, cough like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Til on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!--
An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

An interesting reply to John McCrae's "In Flanders' Fields" by Saskatchewan's Edna Jaques. Unfortunately, her optimism was unmatched by the folly of future generations.

We have kept the faith, ye Flanders' dead
Sleep well beneath those poppies red
That mark your place.
The torch your dying hands did throw
We've held it high before the foe
And answered bitter blow for blow
In Flanders' fields.

And where your heroes' blood was spilled
The guns are now forever stilled
And silent grown.
There is no moaning of the slain
There is no cry of tortured pain
And blood will never flow gain
In Flanders' fields.

Forever holy in our sight
Shall be those crosses gleaming white
That guard your sleep
Rest you in peace, the task is done
The fight you left us we have won
And peace on Earth has just begun
In Flanders' fields now.


Ieper (Ypres): The town Hall is at present the home of the "In Flanders' Fields Museum"		The Menin Gate: Listed are the names of those with no known grave.		The Menin Gate		The Canadian Monument at Passchendaele.


	Graves of Chinese labouers, killed in 1919 clearing the fields of Flanders			The New Irish Cemetery		Our Vimy Ridge Memorial - from the front




The Vimy Memorial from the rear				The Vimy Memorial as seen from France's Douai Plain		The dead of the Vimy battle.

						Dawn at Vimy Ridge


			The Canadian Memorial at Courcelette, France - on the Somme
						The Newoundlanders' Memorial at Beaumont-Hamel

					A mosaic of Newfoundland, made from pictures of Newfoundland's own.
	The "Danger Tree" of the Beaumont-Hamel battle. A focal point of the Newfoundlanders' attack and the German machine gun fire.

	Two unexploded shells - left for "pickup" at the side of the road near Ieper

The "Brooding Soldier" Memorial at St. Julien (S.Julliaan) near Ieper

	The Petit-Vimy Canadian Cemetery

The German cemetery at Neville St Vaast - a short distance from Vimy Ridge

	The Vimy Memorial: Covered during its restoration