Imagination. The mind’s transportation portal. Able to fly. Take you away from the here and now. To the there, or then. Closely linked to experience. Part of the mind’s knowledgebase. Capable of conjuring emotions based on other’s experiences.
Our penultimate day’s break at St Quentin a disappointment. Towards the end of a trip we need more than a large square and an ancient cathedral to pique our interest. Make the walk worthwhile. Especially once the weather has turned. We make for its art museum. Hopes of viewing a fine pastel collection. The only thing we get to view is the notice outside the entrance. Closed for three weeks. Due to necessary alterations.
We leave our final camp site. Camping La Paille Haute. Just outside Arras. Like many towns and villages in this neck of the woods it’s not what it used to be. Eighty per cent in need of a total rebuild after WW1. Pay a visit to the nearby cemetery. Just one of the 23,000 world wide burial sites looked after by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
As always, immaculate is the word that springs to mind. Three workers on site. Their efforts giving total respect to the 10,000 heroes who lie here.
The Carrière Wellington museum in Arras takes us on an underground experience below ground. 70 feet down. Into the chalk layers. Miriam our Ozzie guide leads us through a small section of the twenty four kilometres of tunnels contructed in six months, by 500 miners from the New Zealand Tunnelling Company. Their job to create an eight day hideaway for 24,000 soldiers. Primed and eager to strike a surprise attack on the Germans.
The story unfolds. We imagine. Walk in the others’ shoes. An impossible ask. Always is. Always will be. We can only walk in ours. We can sometimes walk the same path. Try to imagine what it must have been like. But, always fail miserably. At least our walk is one small way to honour them. Lest we forget.
360 video . . .
The chalk walls ‘grafitee-d’ with drawings, poems, sculptures as the soldiers waited. Killing time. Waiting to be killed. Silent messages for those they’ll leave behind.
A reminder of our mutual humanity.