Good morning, we are continuing with our look at World War I and World War II for November. Today, it is a series about World War I. Historian Norm Christie is going on a tour of the cities of the Great War. This episode has a run time of 49:27 and is called Sacred Places. I am sure I am doing this series out of order, however, the channels that upload these documentaries do not put episode numbers on them.
Norm Christie, a military historian has traveled extensively through the western front of the Great War. This series focuses on the Canadian soldiers that were killed during the Great War. 60,000 Canadians were killed during the Great War. Christie looks at the impact of Canadian soldiers during the Great War. Christie talks about exploring the Western Front and then discovering a cemetery that contained the bodies of the ninety men. There are 16,000 Commonwealth Gravesites and each site is unique. He talks about the Commonwealth War Commission and the standards they set out for burying the dead. The bodies were not to be repatriated and would be buried near where they fell. The headstones were to be the same showing that everyone was being treated equally. Every name was also to be remembered either on a headstone or a memorial. It is here, that a narrator reads a letter from a man who was killed during the battle, which was a nice touch. The next cemetery Norm heads on over to the cemetery near Vimy. He talks about the tranquility and quiet of the cemeteries in comparison to the Great War. The Great War was brutal and there were many battles. The Battle of the Somme was one of the bloodiest battles during the war. There were so many bodies that fell during that battle that the effect on the men was demoralized. Eventually, a commission was established to bury the dead. Hundreds and hundreds of little cemeteries started showing up all over Europe. Millions of men marched off to war and thousand died. Christie talks about the War Commission and its principle to not repatriate the dead. It would have been too expensive and what about the families that did not want to repatriate the dead? What about the unknown soldiers? The soldiers were to be buried amongst their comrades. Visiting the graves would be a challenge for Canadians who had lost their loved ones in the Great War. Christie then moves on to the next cemetery and he explores the headstones that do not have bodies attached to them. With the nature of the war, many men vanished. However, for the people who lost loved ones, it was important to them to at least have a grave to mourn their dead. He then talks about the different types of headstones as well as the efforts to contact the families in order to personalize the headstones. Additional to the headstones the cemeteries have a place that keeps a visitor’s book and a book that has the names of the dead and where they are buried. He talks about the story of a father and a son. At the start of the war, they signed up together. The father died in the Great War while the son survived and returned to Canada. To learn more about the cemeteries and the men that were buried in the cemeteries watch the rest of this episode. I will admit that I get nervous about listening to different historians because you never know what to expect with a different voice. Historians like Lucy Worsley, Suzanne Lipscomb, and Dan Jones are like a comfortable blanket. I may end up changing my mind about Norm, but he is doing a good job with this episode. As far as the series goes, I am still not sure about it. I am going to continue to slog along with this series to see if it is appropriate for the classroom. So far, I wonder why I am reviewing this for November because cemeteries do not seem to fit. I also thought there would have been more of a discussion on the battles themselves. So far, this series is a do not show to a history class.
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The purpose of this blog is to share information on what can be used in a classroom, private school, or home school setting as well as serve as a portfolio of my personal and professional work. The reviews are my opinions and should be treated as such. I just want to provide a tool for teachers to select documentaries for their classrooms. |