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OFFICIAL
POST OPERATION REPORT
Weekend
Patrol of Bruges and the Ypres Salient
10
August 2002 (cont.) |
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Leave Polygon wood and arrive shortly after at Tyne Cot, the largest Commonwealth war graveyard in the world with 11,908 graves. Amongst all the graves we find one for
Captain C S
Jeffries, an Australian winner of the Victoria Cross.
CPL Mullen presentation is a little limited by virtue of leaving it on his desk at work.
Among the 34,927 names of soldiers without graves D M Henderson
finds his name, which is a bit eerie. |
Click on any image
for a larger version |
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Arrive at the German cemetery
at Langemarck. We are immediately struck by the different, darker, more sombre atmosphere of the dark stone plaques and granite crosses in the shade of trees. |
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The graveyard is of modest size as the
Belgians were reluctant to hand land over to the aggressors in the war. Yet it contains the remains of 44,292 German soldiers; four times as many as Tyne Cot. These bodies were exhumed from throughout the area as the Germans weren't allowed to have individual cemeteries
like the allies and were, hence, centralised in locations like
this. |
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The flower garden in the centre contains the mass remains of 25,000 unidentified soldiers as space prevented their individual burial. The other flat gravestone plaques mark the burial of up to 16 soldiers. |
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We stroll around and ponder the view of the war from the German side. |
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[Saturday
10 August cont.] or [Back] |
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