After the CSC, the scholars joined the Battlefield tour, organized by Jim Geltch, on a three-day path that ran through northern France and Belgium revisiting the 1st World War, its legacy of numerous losses and destruction.
2015 is a special year, as it marks the 100th anniversary of ANZAC Day (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), when troops from both countries landed at Gallipoli, the Turkish peninsula, to join the Allied offensive.
We were sent to a past of hard battles, devastation of thousands of lives and living conditions that our generation is too fortunate to fully understand. These three days of historical immersion left the whole group in a state of profound reflection on the war motivations, the sense of duty and patriotism of those who lived at the time, and the paths traced so we would now walk in peace, not an absolute peace, but infinitely superior to years of global military confrontation.
Three moments were particularly special to me: the visit to the Australian National Memorial, in Villers-Bretonneux, where in April 1918 the Australian victory meant a turning point in the war, the Thiepval Memorial, or Anglo-French Memorial, "to the missing of the Somme", to the memory of more than 70 thousand British and South Africans who fought in the Battle of the Somme – beautiful letters from children fondly honoring the soldiers –, and the ceremony at the Menin Gate, that happens every day (yes, every day) at 08:00 PM in Ypres, Belgium, to remember those who fought in the city's defense.
My feeling at the end of this journey was gratitude for the opportunity to learn about the events that much define who we are and where we are today, and respect to those men who wrote History.
Most of us, Brazilians, don’t bring in their families the legacy of the 1st and 2nd World Wars, did not have their families involved and/or killed in battlefields and did not live in a country decimated by these confrontations. Our smaller (although not homogeneous) involvement may mean a privilege, but it does not take away our responsibility to learn about and engage.
The tour photos are available here.
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| The group at the Second Australian Division Memorial |
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