Student Tour Blog

Written by Aeongus Madigan

Today’s journey was one to be remembered, as all our other days have been. It falls to me to write the account for this day, and I shall try to describe the experience as best as possible. We departed Nijmegen early, as we typically have been doing. Nijmegen is a lovely city, and despite our tour leaders claims of it being somewhat shady, on the average I would say I would rather be here than in Toronto. On our drive to Germany we were treated to a somewhat humorous incident (though in retrospect I doubt everyone shares that sentiment) in which the German police stopped our bus at the border. Strange, given how lax borders seem to be in western Europe so far. Our first stop was the EmslandLager camp museum, which sits on the original site where the Nazis held their political prisoners, and later a great number of foreign forced labour, mainly people who had been deported to the camp from eastern Europe. Standing on the site was emotional, more so than the others. A battle can be understood, even if one side is so clearly the worse one, as is the case in the second world war, at the end of the day, you can find reason in a soldier fighting for his nation, his life, or the life of his comrades. But to stand on the site of the pointless cruelty of the Nazis invokes another feeling. Dread, I suppose, would be the correct term. Our second and last stop for that day was the Küsten Canal (just outside of the town of Friesoythe), the site of a battle which the Algonquin Regiment took part in. It was in fact their last engagement, and would be our last tactical exercise. The tactical exercise was enjoyable, as they have all been, though I admit to a degree of satisfaction from actually seeing my group’s plan succeeding, unlike the others, where it feels like the game was rigged from the start. Perhaps our own journey is a shortened version of what a competent officer will undertake over time. I pray I never find out for myself.