Paying our Respects

Polygon Wood to .......
Zonnebeke
Tyne Cot
Langemark
Fromelle
Cambrai
This has been our day, we have travelled along some quiet single lane country roads then onto major highways. Today Neil was our driver and navigator was Peter. The boys do a fantastic job. The hardest part of my and Fiona's journey is looking out either the front or side windows. Well someone has too!!
We visited many of "our boys" today located in some very well maintained and dare I say picturesque cemeteries. The Commonwealth War Graves do a job that makes you very proud to be a part of the Commonwealth. This was really bought home after we visited a German War Cemetery. Such an extreme contrast in their appoarch to design, up keep and general feel of the place.
The cemetery that really hit home was the Pheasant Wood Military Cemetery.  This cemetery was created in January 2010 to welcome the bodies of 249 soliders found in two mass graves by Pheasant Wood.  Many of our boys were lost, were unrecognisable and so were never named. No trace of them , no closure for many families. Mothers who never knew where their son was buried, wives who could not have a place to visit to grieve.
This cemetry came about when in 2007, a passionate historian Jean-Mareie Bailleul realised after researching German archives that two mass graves were buried close to Pheasant Wood. He contacted Australian historians, who subsequently claimed the discovery as their own. In 2009, the graves were exhumed and DNA testing on buckles, buttons, press-studs and fragments of fabric enabled 250 of the bodies to be identified. Of these 205 were Australians - of which 96 could be identified by name- and three were idenified as British. In April 2013, a further five Aussie soliders were identified and efforts to name more continue.
What really hits home are the messages families put onto the head stones.
Lest We Forget.

Australian Memorial Park, this statue is called Cobbers.

In full flight - Proud Aussie's we are.

One of our soliders buried in Pheasant Wood Military Cemetery, please note the families inscription.

Not our hotel here in Cambrai but just down the road.

This is "home" for the 21st and 22nd April.

Tyne Cot Cemetery - World's largest Commonwealth war grave cemetery. The sight of 11.954 unifom graves stretching into the distance is humbling.