To the bone: An amateur military archeologist in Ypres describes a memorable dig

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT

Ypres, Belgium—Pol Lefevre remembers the first time he found human remains beneath a once blood-stained field in Flanders. He could tell by the unusual resonance of his spade that he had struck neither rock nor a piece of buried metal.
“Hitting a human bone sounds different,” he said. “I cannot explain it, but you can hear the difference—and feel it.”

What Lefevre discovered that day was actually three skeletons lying on top of each other—the remains of two German soldiers and one British, who died during the First World War near the Yorkshire Trench, a section of the front line from 1915 to 1917 just north of Ypres.

“We don’t know exactly how they died,” said Lefevre. “It could have been hand-to-hand fighting. Or perhaps they were trapped in an explosion.”

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Photographer and author Len Wagg on his new book honouring Canada’s war dead

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Photographer and author Len Wagg believes that “every Canadian” should visit the war cemeteries of Europe, should walk between the rows of headstones, should comprehend the sacrifices made on the sacred ground on which they died. He contends that those same Canadians should gaze upon the Canadian National Vimy Memorial and all it represents, should walk among the monument’s 20 allegorical statues—embodying values such as honour, justice and peace—and should contemplate the still-crater-pocked landscape that surrounds it.

Most critically, Wagg hopes that the human stories of conflict—both overseas and back in Canada—won’t be forgotten. It’s a sentiment that underpins his latest book At Home and Beyond: Honouring Canada’s War Dead.

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