#beaumont-hamel

[mistwalker-official]

Thanks for a great year in terms of streaming! Shocked to see the number of followers increase by 44%. That is absolutely astounding to me.

It means a lot to me how much people have been enjoying ‘Oceanic Heritage’, as a I put a lot of time and work into that record. Cool to see “Beaumont-Hamel” come out on top as the most popular song.

Also I guess we’ll have to book some dates in Europe sometime in the future.

[poetrex]

Canada Day hits different in Newfoundland. For starters, the province didn’t join Confederation until 1949, and the holiday is not technically observed until the afternoon—flags fly at half-mast until 12:00 for Memorial Day, commemorating the Newfoundland Regiment’s traumatic losses at Beaumont-Hamel in 1916. I’ve always thought it was a poignant counterweight to our yearly celebration of patriotism. It encapsulates my own ambivalence. It wasn’t for nothing they fought and died—and one may yet rely on the gratitude of Belgians and Frenchmen—but Newfoundlanders never forgot how the Empire callously cast the flower of their manhood into the meatgrinder. And I think about this a lot with respect to marginalized communities still in a colonial relationship to the metropoles, still being treated like disposable things. Today I celebrate Canada, remembering that this is a vast country with a long history and home to many nations. Let’s make it a nice place to live for all of us.

[twf100]

Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial, Beaumont-Hamel France, December 2018.

Full photo gallery online here.

Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial

On July 1 1916, the first day of the Somme Offensive, at 8:45am the 780 men of the Newfoundland Regiment left their trench at St. John’s Road and moved forwards towards the German line. This was their first major engagement of the war and they were the only troops in No Man’s Land at this time. Totally exposed to German fire, within 15 minutes only 110 men remained uninjured. Just 68 reported for duty the following morning. The regiment was effectively wiped out.

Soldiers of the Newfoundland Regiment at St. John’s Road trench on the morning of July 1 1916, photo Wikipedia

In 1921 the former Roman Catholic Priest of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Tom Nangle, negotiated with 250 French landowners and arranged for Newfoundland to purchase the site of the battle to serve as a memorial. In addition to the Newfoundland caribou, emblem of the Newfoundland Regiment, the memorial site includes the original trench lines and shell craters of the 1916 battlefield, Y Ravine Cemetery, Hawthorn Ridge Cemeteries No 1 and 2, Hunter’s Cemetery, the 29th British Division Memorial and the 51st Highland Division Memorial.

The memorial is a massively big site and, being December, I pretty much had the entire place to myself. It would have been nice to have additional time to spend, but the feeling of history and sacrifice was still obvious over 100 years later.

July 9, 2019

[ptrcmr]

"La vie est un long fleuve tranquille"

Beaumont-Hamel, Newfoundland Memorial, Hauts-de-France

©PTRCMR

[mistwalker-official]

Posted a guitar playthrough of “Beaumont-Hamel” from Oceanic Heritage to YouTube.

[stylized-corpse]

Haven't done a guitar playthrough in a while. Here's one for my song "Beaumont-Hamel" from the album Oceanic Heritage by @mistwalker-official.

[twf100]

8th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Memorial, Beaumont-Hamel France, December 2018.

Full photo gallery online here.

8th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Memorial

Directly across the D163 roadway from the Hawthorn Ridge Crater and adjacent to the Sunken Lane where British troops were filmed in the moments before the start of the Battle of the Somme on July 1 1916, sits a memorial to the 8th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

A Gaelic inscription on the memorial reads “friends are good on the day of the battle”.

Below: British soldiers wait in the Sunken Lane before the start of the Battle of the Somme

[nostalgia-eh52]

1925 Opening of the Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont-Hamel, France,