Through the mud and wind, rain and snow, uphill and down - the soldiers trudged. They persisted when conditions were unbearable and fought excruciating pain and heartache. Thousands of young men from countries around the world lost their lives in WW1, and I have spent the last week walking in their footsteps. Learning about war in school back at home is interesting but requires a good imagination because it is something that we are so far removed from. However I have had the opportunity to learn about war in the exact location that it took place. I have visited many important battlefields, monuments, memorials and cemeteries which honour the people who fought here. It's an entirely different perspective as I walk through the tunnels and trenches that hundreds of soldiers walked through before me. It's a sad and harsh reality of what life was really like for them.
The weather here has been absolutely bitter cold lately; it's extremely damp and no matter how many layers of clothing I wear I am never warm enough. We've traversed farmers fields filled with mud to see the exact views that they saw. As miserable as I have felt, as I stand their to listen to the historians speak, shivering and covered with mud, the images of young men around the same age as myself does not escape my mind. They not only walked through these conditions for a couple of hours at a time, they lived in them and died in them.
People in France have an everlasting reminder of war. Fields are scared with craters and holes from artillery and the countryside is filled with cemeteries where thousands upon thousands of men and women lay forever. It's a unique feeling to be apart of something that happened so long ago, to commemorate people I never knew and to be so distant from the people whom were touched by these tragic events.
As I have read the many names inscribed on the various headstones and memorials, I have tried to picture a story, to pause in silence and imagine the family and friends who were affected by the loss of each young man.
And now for some pictures:
(Inscription on Thiepval Memorial where 60,000 British and French soldiers are remembered)
(German memorial overlooking a giant crater where an entire platoon lost their life in an explosion) 
(Tombstone of a 16-year old Canadian soldier)
(Giant memorial called "The Lantern" in a French cemetary)
(An unexploded shell in a field)
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