It has been a
difficult week in Canada. Two separate attacks
have left two members of our armed forces dead and a country in shock.
I’ve spent quite
a lot of time in trying to figure out how my voice, within this space might
make an appropriate tribute to the sacrifice WO Vincent and Cpl Cirillo
made. Perhaps it is best to help
understand the significance of where Cpl Cirillo had been performing his duty,
as an Honour Guard at our Monument to the First World War’s Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier.
The First World
War was the first large scale conflict to pitch countries at a new industrial
peak against each
The
chief cause of casualties in the war was artillery. In the siege atmosphere of the Western Front,
big guns were used to destroy defenses, give cover to the infantry and silence
enemy artillery in “counter-battery” fire.
Large shells made to burst overhead to distribute fragments or use the
concussive force of high explosive do not create antiseptic casualties. Quite often, men were obliterated. These soldiers became missing not because know
one knew where they were, but because their bodies no longer existed in any
recognisable sense.
Adding
to this is the need -both pressing and humanly towards our sympathy and
reverence for our dead and practicalities involving hygiene and morale- to bury
the dead as soon as situationally possible.
With the static nature of the war, and the speed of which these burials
were made, often the battle would revisit these sites, churning and
disinterring these hasty graves; or burial sites themselves would become lost. Mr Christie’s “latest project is the
investigation of and search for a burial plot, designated as CA40. It is known
to be the last resting place of 44 individuals of the 16th Bn (Canadian
Scottish). The exact location having been lost over time, it is believed to be
a mass grave made from a mine crater in no man’s land somewhere in the Vimy
area of operations. With adequate funding the possibility of surveying with
ground penetrating radar might provide the exact location, probably at a depth
of 7-10 metres.”[2]
All
of the missing was to leave an immense sentiment of a lack of closure. This need eventually became intrinsically
linked with the body created first to establish permanent grave sites for the
war dead. The Commonwealth War Graves
Commission (CWGC) was established by Royal Charter in May, 1917 (initially as
the Imperial War Graves Commission). By
1918 its members had identified 587,000 graves and determined a further 559,000
dead with no known grave.[3]Their
service continues today, as illustrated by the mission statement posted on
their website: “The Commonwealth
War Graves Commission ensures that 1.7 million people who died in the two world
wars will never be forgotten. We care for cemeteries and
Even before this occurred, there was felt a need, even if
it were mostly symbolic, to alleviate the sense of unrecovered loss. A clergyman deeply affected by an anonymous
grave began to push for the notion of a formal interring of an unidentified
body to represent all who shared this fate. “A
chaplain at the Front, the Reverend David Railton (1884-1955), when he noticed
in 1916 in a back garden at Armentières, a grave with a rough cross on which
were pencilled the words ‘An Unknown British Soldier.’ In August 1920 he wrote
to the Dean of Westminster, Herbert Ryle, through whose energies this
memorial was carried into effect.”[7]
This notion was carried on by other
countries wishing to make a similar tribute.
Canada was no exception to this, selecting
one of the 1,603 graves of unknown Canadians buried in the vicinity of Vimy
Ridge. “In
May 2000, the remains of an unidentified Canadian soldier who died in the First
World War were repatriated from France and, with great ceremony, were buried in
a special tomb in front of the National War Memorial in Ottawa”[8]
“The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was
created to honour the more than 116,000 Canadians who sacrificed their lives in
the cause of peace and freedom. Furthermore, the Unknown Soldier represents all
Canadians, whether they be navy, army, air force or merchant marine, who died
or may die for their country in all conflicts - past, present, and future.”[9] Which means that Cpl Cirillo, in performing
his duty was doing so in honour of WO Vincent who had been killed earlier in
the week. Now as we go forward, Cpl
Cirillo himself is honoured by those who continue to stand where he was. Let it ever be so.
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