Thought I'd share some photographs from our trip to France and Belgium this past summer.
What struck my kids was the ages of some of the men who served and died in the two world wars, some as young as 16 years old, not much older than my eldest boy. What was obvious to me from these cemeteries was how the two wars were so different in the way they were fought.
The First World War battlefield sites (Flanders, Vimy, Somme) are littered with cemeteries of varying sizes, scattered across the farm fields, reflecting the static nature of this war as many of these cemeteries were created during the fighting. At the WW1 cemeteries the proportion of unknown soldiers or soldiers "known to be buried at this cemetery" can approach 70%. Contrast that to Beny-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, a concentration cemetery just inland from Juno Beach (Normandy) with about 2,000 burials of which something like 15 grave sites are of unknown soldiers.
Andrew
[attachment=17829:Menin_Gate.jpg] [attachment=17830:Reflecti...G_3947_6.jpg]
[attachment=17833:Poppies_Flanders.jpg] [attachment=17827:12_x_12_Brothers.jpg]
[attachment=17828:18_x_12_Adegem.jpg] [attachment=17831:Vimy_Memorial__.jpg]
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[attachment=17834:JL_Dewar...Cemetary.jpg] [attachment=17835:Beny_sur..._SS_Bird.jpg]
