by Sean Mallen
I settled on Chez Leon, which seemed to at least have a facade of Belgian authenticity. As I sat surrounded by patrons speaking English, it quickly became clear that it must have been in all the guidebooks. No matter. I ordered one of the famous Belgian cherry-flavoured beers, some mussels, and frites. It was all fine and filling, if not gastronomically adventurous.
In the morning, I took a taxi out to meet Dan at the NATO headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels. It felt like stepping into a time machine back into the height of the Cold War. It had the look of a fifties-era army base, with buildings like bunkers, surrounded by barbed wire.
We were there because the NATO PR department had offered an interview with the secretary general in advance of a conference on Afghanistan, to be held in Chicago the following week. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish politician who occupied the post, was doing a round of interviews that day. We were just after the BBC — somewhat less important in NATO’s mind, no doubt.
They offered us the use of their studio and cameras. All we needed to do was provide discs to record it all on. Generally, news outlets are supposed to shoot interviews themselves, but this all made it more convenient for small operators like us.
AFR was lean, high-voiced, and earnest. I wondered if he remembered my name or where I came from seconds after I was introduced. No matter. He would at least remember that we were Canadian.
I was hoping to make some news out of a Human Rights Watch report from that morning that criticized NATO for civilian deaths during the Libya campaign. But Rasmussen sprang a surprise, telling me that he would like Canada to continue its training mission in Afghanistan beyond the planned 2014 pullout date. Sounded like news to me. A call to the Ottawa bureau chief confirmed that the secretary general had told us something that had not yet been reported — a minor exclusive.
As it turned out, the prime minister was giving a news conference back home, and we managed to get a question posed to him on the subject — although my message was garbled, and he was asked about the U.N. secretary general. The PM’s flacks told us afterward that his answer would have been the same either way — that Canada had no plans to change plans. Political message tracks are handy that way. Often it does not matter what you ask, they stick to what they had already planned to say.
We shot the requisite stand-up at NATO HQ and headed back to the hotel to file — only to find that NATO’s disc would not play on Dan’s camera. Big problem. We had an exclusive that we could not play back.
Given that it was only lunchtime, we quickly made the decision to hop the first Eurostar train back to London and hope that the disc would work in our machine in the bureau. The story did not need to be ready until 10:30 p.m. London time, so there was enough leeway. It was rare to get an exclusive on a story like this, so we led the program. No other news organization bothered to pick it up. Our glory was muted.
Shortly after my return to London from my Brussels jaunt, we were back on the Royals beat, this time with a rare Canadian angle. Given the headbanging impossibilities of reforming Canada’s constitution, Queen Elizabeth II and her heirs will reign on for the foreseeable future as our distant head of state.
Consequently, our national police force proudly remains the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The connection with the House of Windsor remains strong. When the RCMP gave the Queen a horse named Burmese, it became one of her favourites. She rode the black mare at the Trooping the Colour ceremony for eighteen consecutive years. When Burmese departed from this life, the Queen showed her regal affection by ordering it to be buried on the grounds of Windsor Castle. Richard III should have been so lucky.
Now, a select group of Mounties was designated to fill in at Horse Guards Parade as the ceremonial guard for the monarch. The Household Cavalry, the ones with the silver-coloured helmets shined to a blinding gleam, typically has the duty. Indeed, only once before in their 350-year history have they stepped aside to allow a force from the colonies to do the job — it was a Canadian group the other time, too. So, when the Mounties were tapped for the job, it was a very big deal in the arcane realm of royal responsibilities, symbolism, and pageantry.
For a preview story, we and our Canadian TV news colleagues were invited over to Hyde Park Barracks to see the Mounties preparing for their big day. For our photo op they were in plain blue jackets, saving the red serge for the real thing. And the horses they were using were not their own. This particular duty requires a special kind of training — the animal must stand still for hours, patiently unmoving while tourists snap pictures, stand beside them, and occasionally pat their muzzle. Would not do for a horse to bite a chunk out of a bystander or to kick a photo bug in the balls. There was no time to train Canadian horses, so the Mounties were atop loaners from the Household Cavalry.
For the benefit of our cameras, a regimental corporal ran the team through their paces. The barrel-chested Brit barked out commands in a hoarse foghorn delivery that for the average person would cause the larynx to leap out of the throat and go flying across the pavement. After a few minutes of trotting around in different formations, the group headed across the street into the park so that they could canter past our cameras a couple of times.
In the distance, I could see some of the Household Cavalry working on their routines, their silver helmets gleaming in the sunlight. One of the spokespeople advised me that these were merely their “knocking around” uniforms, used for training. Some knock-arounds. The helmets were like mirrors. They must spend most of their waking hours polishing the various elements of their kit, I thought. No one does uniforms like the British.
Photo opportunity over, the Mounties lined up their steeds — and looked at us. We looked at them. There was an awkward moment before one of the press people pointed out that this was our opportunity to interview them.
“C’mon. We won’t bite,” said one of the Mounties.
Perhaps not. But interviewing a tall RCMP atop a tall horse is tricky without a step ladder, even if your cameraman is six foot two. From that angle, the camera looks up their nostrils with a bright sky backdrop — an ugly shot.
I explained the aesthetic challenges and he reluctantly got down. I suspect they were all told that Mounties should preferably stay mounted for the TV cameras. The entire group were members of the RCMP’s iconic Musical Ride troupe, and uniformly they were bursting with pride, but not quotes. The best any of them could do was a repeated “It’s a great honour.”
I resisted the temptation to ask about how this was a welcome bit of good publicity for a force whose image had been taking a pounding. The lead story on the CBC’s website that day was a discrimination lawsuit that had been launched against the RCMP.
The next day, we dutifully set up on The Mall to capture their mounted procession to Horse Guards Parade. It promised to be a great shot — a parade of Mounties in red serge cantering down the grand boulevard with Union flags lining the route and Buckingham Palace behind them in the distance. There was also an extra element of novelty: three of the officers were women — an extremely rare sight for this duty.
As we waited, an elderly Brit stopped to chat with us. I will call him Lord Eyebrows due to the caterpillars on his forehead and the archaic wooliness of this attitude. He harrumphed loudly at the news that women … WOMEN … would be part of Her Majesty’s ceremonial guard on that day.
To her great credit, Ann MacMillan of CBC (a long-time resident of London, married to a prominent English journalist, and a descendant of Lloyd George no less) effectively dressed him down with an explanation that women do in fact know how to ride horses, stand on guard, and occasionally govern countries, including his.
Lord Eyebrows was the exception. Several other people stopped to ask what was happening and were uniformly delighted to hear that RCMP officers, male and female, would be on duty at Horse Guards Parade that day. In spite of ourselves, we could not help but feel an uncharacteristic rush of Canadian pride. For which we all immediately apologized.
For twen
ty minutes, we stood in the centre of The Mall, the camera people adjusting their tripods to fine-tune the angle for their expected shot. Then, there they were in the distance. At that exact moment, several cops suddenly appeared and chased us all off the street. So much for the glorious image as we rushed off to the sidewalk and the camera people scrambled to capture the procession as the Mounties turned into the parade ground.
On an unusually warm day for London, the Canadians formed a line in their toasty red serge and stetsons, facing a row of Household Cavalry in their silver helmets. The crowds loved it.
An elderly British lady kindly stepped aside so that we could set up our tripod to capture the scene. “This is wonderful! They should have told us this was happening,” she said.
The handover ceremony complete, we walked over to the Whitehall side where the Mounties were now standing guard — in a strictly ceremonial sense, given that the Queen’s home is way over on the other side of St. James’s Park. Crowds were thick on the sidewalk snapping pictures.
The Canadian cops alternated between suppressed grins and nervous glances whenever anyone tried to pat the horses, likely fearing that the ceremonial steeds might be inclined to bite off a well-wisher’s finger.
All in all, it was a lovely story.
More true Canadian patriotism … and pain … was to come.
Even as we were covering the Mounties, we got word of a profound journey taking place on the continent. A group of Canadian veterans was on a bicycle tour of famous battle sites around Western Europe — all were Afghan veterans, all suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The very next day they were to be making a stop at the most famous of all Canadian victories, Vimy Ridge. It was irresistible.
We rushed back to the bureau to finish off the RCMP story while I simultaneously made preparations to get on the Eurostar that night to Lille, which is about a forty-minute drive to Vimy. As Dan was going on vacation, our China-based cameraman, Nicolas, was in London and would be accompanying me to France.
Except: Lille had some kind of convention in town. There seemed to be not a single available hotel room anywhere, unless we wanted to stay in Belgium. We feverishly searched all websites and kept coming up empty. Finally, Dan managed to locate via a web service a couple of rooms at a spa hotel on the edge of Lille. Good enough.
I called the site’s 1-800 number to ensure it was properly booked. A pleasant woman with a southern lilt asked if I minded if she called me by my first name.
“Why sure, darlin’!” (Which I did not say. A good Canadian, I answered, “Sure.”)
She took all our information, then read it back to me for verification.
“Y’all have a fine time in Layl,” she chirped.
I popped home to shower off the sweat of my horsey day, pack a bag, and then hop a taxi to meet Nicolas at St. Pancras International station. This, dear reader, was the kind of day when being a Foreign Correspondent™ can be invigorating.
As civilized as the Eurostar was, I was looking forward to a pleasant, expense account French supper at the spa hotel, and so decided to hold off on eating. A crucial error.
The taxi driver at the Lille station looked puzzled when we gave him the address of the hotel, but shrugged and headed out. It was a long drive. I watched the total climb on his meter as we went through the suburbs to a country highway and arrived at a gate. A closed gate. The buildings behind were dark.
The cabbie slowly approached the gate, expecting it to open. It didn’t. He got out and buzzed on the intercom. No answer. We called the number of the hotel. No response.
Now we understood why there were rooms available. The place was closed, but somehow the booking site and the southern belle who so sweetly verified our reservation missed that useful fact.
The driver said not to worry, that surely there must be room somewhere in Lille. He started calling. And calling. Tous complets. Nada. Niente. Fuck all hotel rooms.
It was now nine o’clock and my stomach reminded me of the declined meal on the train.
Our friendly cabbie kept making call after call. Astonishingly, he finally found a real room at a golf resort in Arras, the closest town to Vimy. Only one room, but at least it was a double. Despite having only met Nic the day before, we were now going to be roommates.
The already hefty taxi fare now grew into heroic proportions as we got on the highway. Forty minutes and €220 later we pulled up to our accommodations. We gave our helpful driver a nice tip. He handed over his card with a big smile and encouraged us to call anytime we were in Lille. No shit. It was likely the biggest fare of his career.
By now it was ten o’clock and the resort’s restaurant was long since closed. So much for my fine French dinner. But at least the bar was open and at least they would make me a croque monsieur. Coupled with a tall glass of beer, it may have been the best croque monsieur ever. Our room turned out to be a suite, with the bedroom divided from the sofa bed, which Nic kindly volunteered to take. So at least we did not have to listen to each other’s snores and bodily eruptions all night long.
Someone, I am not sure who, once said that any Canadian who is able to go should make a point of visiting Vimy Ridge.
It had been my privilege to travel across the English Channel with veterans of the Dieppe raid on the fiftieth anniversary of the mission and watch as they wept at the sight of the shore where so many fought and died so long ago.
I once walked through the Canadian cemetery in Normandy and got a shiver when I saw how many of the gravestones listed young men who fell during D-Day at age nineteen.
But nothing is quite like Vimy.
And nothing would be quite like my first visit.
Outside of Canada it is lightly understood. Most non-Canadian war historians consider the Battle of Vimy Ridge just one operation within the broader Battle of Arras.
But it was a resonant event in our nationhood. Both the French and the British tried and failed repeatedly to dislodge the Germans from the high point. In April 1917, the Canadians did the job. Although the commander was British, it was the first time that all four Canadian divisions fought as a unit and it became a powerful statement of nationalism.
Of course it was a war and the glory was bought with much blood: 3,598 dead, 7,004 wounded. Likely not counted in those numbers were the men who were shattered mentally, who suffered from what was unsympathetically dubbed “shell shock.”
Now we were about to relive it through the eyes of modern-day casualties of war. But first we had to get there.
We rushed to a car rental place and started making our way out of Arras through small-town rush hour traffic.
En route, the phone rang. It was one of the Help for Heroes organizers asking if we were still coming because the entourage had already arrived.
“No worries. We’ll wait for you,” he said when I told him we were minutes away.
We would be the only news crew at the event.
It was a misty morning and we were unable to see the iconic twin monuments until we were almost upon them. When we arrived, Wayne Johnston from Wounded Warriors immediately rushed up to us, beaming, and thanked us for coming. He is hard to miss, with a handlebar moustache waxed out to impossibly straight points, a shaven head, and a forthright readiness to tell you all about his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder after his time in the former Yugoslavia.
The parking lot was bustling with a couple of hundred people wearing cycling togs, most with British symbols. The twenty-one Canadian riders were badly outnumbered.
But everyone was carrying little Maple Leaf flags. This was Canada’s moment.
The Canadians lined the way as a piper led the group to the monument. The pathway is bordered with electric fences and signs warning visitors not to stray. Even all these years later, the surrounding terrain is still full of unexploded munitions from the First World War.
Unless you have ice water in your veins, you cannot help but have a catch in your throat at the sight of that place, particula
rly if you are in the company of soldiers who served in a foreign land and came back with demons that scarred their lives.
Captain Phil Ralph, a chaplain, spoke: “Welcome to Canada,” he said. “This is holy ground.”
The Canadians were given pride of place at the ceremony, standing in a dignified line at the front, their little flags planted in the ground at their feet. It mattered little that they were dressed in sweaty cycling togs.
Back in the day when so many fought and died at Vimy and so many other battles, they did not know anything about PTSD. It had not even been given a name, let alone much understanding. Those who came back from the wars suffering from it often had little support or sympathy at home.
“This monument reminds us that this is not new,” said Captain Ralph. “But that we are with you.”
“Things have gotten better, but that’s not good enough. We’ve always got to strive,” Johnston told me.
The service had many of the elements we have all seen on Remembrance Day: someone saying, “We will remember them,” a bugler playing “The Last Post,” and a moment of silence.
I watched the line of Canadians, many of them tough-looking guys who have seen a lot. Their eyes were streaming.
At the end of the ceremony, the soldiers clasped each other’s shoulders, approached the monument, knelt, and laid hands on it for a moment. One rider, overcome, walked away with head bowed, finally dropping to one knee off in the field with a comrade comforting him. Powerful, powerful.
I wondered how men who had already suffered so much trauma could handle such an intense moment.
Wayne Johnston admitted to me that the organizers had worried about it, but in the end, he felt that they were “good tears.”
