Armisitice Day

Just heard the two minute's silence on the radio.

Anyone that's seen the war graves in Flanders would, I assume, be extra mindfull of the sacrifices. I went there two years ago, after promising myself I'd go after reading Sebastian Faulk's Birdsong. Here's a few snaps.

This is the German front line (you don't say). The trenches are preserved and it's quite chilling walking through them. In this particular trench Hitler served as a young officer in World War One.

The Theipval Memorial. On this massive monument there are, if I remember right, 70,000 names of the 'unfound' that died in Flanders Fields.

The danger tree. This is in 'no man's land' between the German and English front line. Thousands died here in the battle of the Somme. When I was there is was a beautiful day, and I saw a red squirrel for the first time ever, climbing a tree in no-man's land.
Me in a trench. These particular trenches are the best preserved from WW1.

The war graves at Tyne Cot. This is the biggest war cemetery, just outside Ypres, right on Flander's fields. You can still find bullets in the surrounding fields.

The English & Allied graves are pristine. There's not a scrap of littler or smudge on the stones. The German war graves are a different deal. Grey stone blocks contain the name of those buried in one huge hole. A mass grave.

And here's me in a crypt at the German cemetery. Awful place, quite chilling.

So what did I learn from my trip? War is horrible, thousands died. . we know all that. And I met quite a few people who make a hobby of visiting war graves to somberly 'pay their respects'. I wanted to shake them and say "do you these dead guys would want you to walk around here morbidly on their behalf?".

I think they'd want us to remember, but to also get out of life what they were robbed, and make our lives full of the stuff that they were missing and what they dreamed about in those hellish trenches.

I don't quite know what you are supposed to think in the two minute's silence. How can you remember people you never met?

But that's not the point is it? It's important to just stop and think of them, because if you don't remember, it makes the loss seem futile, and that can't happen.

I'll not go back to the war graves, and I'll never understand people's interest in the great war, in that, I mean the strategies and the hardware and stuff . . but I hope I'll always do my best to always think of those poor men who were cut down having lived only half my life span.