I went to Poperinge near Ypres with seven other Quakers and even though I had read a lot about the 14-18 war and seen TV programmes and pictures and films, it still gives a shock when you go there and experience the sheer scale of the awfulness of it all. So many young men dead in these endless huge cemeteries and also the tens of thousands of names of men who have no known graves. Just before I left I looked up Uncle Henry,`s death, my father`s brother, on line and saw that he died near Ypres. We passed his cemetery on the way from Calais. It was difficult to find the grave among the thousands but eventually there it was, poor Henry Vickers, who died in December 1916, I do not think anyone in the family had ever seen it before.
We stayed at Talbot House founded by the Rev Tubby Clayton as a refuge for battle weary soldiers and now a museum as well as a simple B and B. We held our Quaker Meeting on Sunday in the chapel up in the attic. We trudged round the German cemetery, the Island of Ireland, the Pool of Peace and the impressive Flanders Field museum in Ypres, and we heard the Last Post at the Menai gate which is sounded every night at eight oclock. We all felt really glad we had made the expedition together.
Grand daughter G has gone off to China for nine weeks to teach in a remote rural area. How brave.