" cupra" wrote in message
...
Sacha wrote:
On 15/1/08 11:20, in article ,
"cupra" wrote:

snip
Tens of thousands of Mothers queuing for hours on end to pass the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as it 'could be' their son, families
visiting the battlefields for many years attempting to discover
where their Son/Brother/Father may have been buried, the temporary
plaster Cenotaph being replaced by stone as it became an unexpected
focus of remembrance for years past it's due. And so on....

As I say, a book I'd wholeheartedly recommend.



It's profoundly moving to visit the war cemeteries in Normandy. That
should be part of every child's education.

Absolutely - a visit to the WW1 graves too (something I plan to do soon).

We didn't see one
headstone which gave an age older than 36 and mNY were 18 or so. The
American one was vast because all were buried together but the
British tended to be buried in the churchyards nearest to where they
had fallen, so the military cemetery in Caen is nowhere as large as
the US one. But the first time I visited the US one, I was taken
also to the very sombre German cemetery. What struck me very much
was that at the US cemetery, there had been dozens of visitors and in
the German one, I saw a solitary figure weeping bitterly over a
grave. My hosts told me that the Germans had let the cemetery go to
such a point that local farmers were grazing cows in it and cutting
hay. The British War Graves Commission encouraged the Germans to
clean it up and maintain it, on the grounds that even if defeated,
their men had given their lives, too. Now it is immaculate and when I
saw it there was a fairly newly planted avenue of trees leading up to
it.

As, I'm here asking about Japonicas, I thought you might be interested in a
war memorial that moved me.

I wen't home and wrote about it
http://www.go-self-sufficient.com/lestweforget.htm

Regards
Pat Gardiner