Our quick trip to Belgium was mainly to visit West Flanders (West-Vlaanderen) to see some of the WWI memorials. There are over 170 cemeteries and there are seemingly more memorials than you can count. The area around Ieper (Ypres) saw some of the most brutal fighting of the war. You can read more about the "Ypres Salient" here. Winston Churchill once said of the area, "A more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world."
The largest of the cemeteries is Tyne Cot, named after a barn that was called "Tyne Cottage" by the British soldiers. In fact, this is the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world, with nearly 12,000 soldiers of the U.K. and commonwealth countries buried here. The number at the bottom of the war graves listing for Tyne Cot is a bit shocking: only 3,588 of the soldiers buried here are identified.
3 comments:
Very nice photo for this subject. It changes from the usual white crosses. It has a Southern feeling with those trees.
Another wonderfully well-composed and lovely shot of a sad subject! Beautiful!
I like your story with your photos. Well done. As I am from New Zealand some of our soldiers would be here too. - Dave
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