In the summer of 1964 my friend, Colin Pryor, persuaded me to join him on his Lambretta motorscooter for a trip to the South of France. Colin’s father, Bill, an engineer who had been named a Member of the British Empire for designing the aircraft maintenance program used during the Berlin Airlift, volunteered to overhaul the Lambretta, and we jumped at his offer. When you’re on intimate terms with military aircraft engines, stripping down a 150cc two-stroke machine is recreational.

Our trip originated in Norfolk, a county 90 miles northeast of London, in a small market town called Watton. The Automobile Association, known as the “AA” in England, supplied us with a route map. Their comments on terrain proved imaginative. “Gently undulating” hills translated into a gradient of one in ten, a significant challenge for a glorified lawn mower engine saddled with two strapping 18-year-olds, with sleeping bags, tent, and provisions in tow.

After waving goodbye to my family, we embarked on our adventure through the country roads of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent, eventually making our way to the Dover/Calais ferry. Colin still has a photo of me looking green during the crossing; I have never forgiven him for hauling it out to show friends on our return.

We spent our first night in a huge sewer pipe we lucked into during a torrential downpour east of Calais. Six feet in diameter and twice as long, the pipe lay close to a deep trench. Although designed to carry water from the inside, we adapted its function to repel water from the outside. It beat pitching a tent in the pouring rain. We woke dry at five in the morning, and a quick trip to the local bakery secured us a baguette loaf that radiated heat to our cheeks before it even reached our mouths. Who needed the Guide Michelin with comfort like this?

Our travels continued through the cathedral city of Lille, and Arras, a medieval wool and tapestry centre, on the road to Cambrai. Suddenly we noticed rows and rows of perfectly symmetrical graves, as far as the eye could see; each row perfectly aligned with its neighbour, each row at uniform height, each row like the next and the next and the next…

This was no ordinary cemetery. This was a war cemetery.

We pulled off the road to get a better look. A rotund Frenchman in a standard blue maintenance uniform-complete with beret-was balancing his 300-pound frame on the seat of a lawnmower that could have easily been found at a well-maintained golf course. Systematically he weaved in and out of the many rows of graves. The care he took convinced us he knew each occupant personally.

A metallic flash caught my eye. The sun reflected off an antique pocketknife, nestled on a faded grey cloth between two graves next to a water pump. I realized why the Frenchman looked the way he did. Spread on the cloth was a crusty baguette, a ripe pear, slices of pungent andouille, a hard orange slab of Boulle de lille, and a white cone of Boulette de Cambrai, complemented by an unmarked bottle of red wine. I fantasized about the size of his dinner, when he could actually sit at a table to savour his food.

My focus drifted from the food back to the graves. Some had crests and names. Others simply bore the universal epitaph “A Soldier of the Great War.” Each gravesite was adorned with an individual rose, tulip, or local flower, settled in freshly trowelled earth with not a weed in sight. Every plot had immaculately manicured edges where soil met grass. The care reflected and likely surpassed what their families could provide these lost loved ones. I speculated my granddad would take comfort in knowing that his brother received this much attention.

My conception of war related to watching my grandfather pin on his medals and march with his British Legion colleagues past our local war memorial on a grey November day each year. The assembled group of war veterans, military detachments, cadets, and onlookers would sing the hymn “Abide With Me” and another that featured the phrase, “For those in peril on the sea.” The haunting, piercing “Last Post” seemed to focus and transfix those present. Like many old soldiers granddad said very little about the war, but had once described trench warfare and how each man had drawn straws for the assignment of crawling on his belly under barbed wire to pick up the mail pouch, and also how his left ear had been disfigured by frostbite. He never mentioned his brother Herbert. I knew only that he had died on the Somme towards the end of World War I.

Colin and I were in the midst of what, almost fifty years earlier, had been the Western Front. Vimy Ridge, where the old Dominion of Canada bought its legitimacy with the blood of young Canadians, lay mere kilometres away to our north. This war to end wars had spawned an even bigger conflict a short 21 years later. Casualties of that conflict lay in front of us next to their equally idealistic comrades, whose concept of war changed brutally on these same French fields between 1914 and 1918.

South of us, originating near St. Quentin, the River Somme curved its way to the English Channel via Peronne, Amiens, and Abbeville. These picturesque towns had likely been artillery coordinates on my great-uncle’s map. I got to thinking. He, and a whole generation of his peers, many of them 18 years old and idealistic like we were, had embarked on their own adventure in France.

They had made a terrible mistake.

They did not enjoy the sun we would enjoy, or the cool salt water of the Mediterranean, or the olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes and basil of Provence, or the brief liaisons with the local jeune filles. Their French adventure included rain, mud, stale food, loneliness, terror, and death.

As we left Arras for the warmer Côte d’Azur, I understood why granddad said little about the war. I understood why his eyes glassed over when the bugler played the “Last Post.” I understood the horrendous bond these old soldiers shared. I understood what the American kids in Vietnam would go through. Most of all, I understood how fortunate my generation was to have escaped conscription and war.

All we had to fight that summer in France was sunburn, hangovers, possible jellyfish stings, and the holiday traffic on the N7 AutoRoute. Then we would come home.

Granddad and his memories made it home from France. His brother never did.

Ian Cooper graduated from Woodsworth College in 1999, and wrote this piece while enrolled in the Professional Writing program at Erindale.

Originally from Norfolk, U.K., he has made Toronto his home since 1976.