THE OLD WAR ZONE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 31, 5 August 1930, Page 7

THE OLD WAR ZONE

THIRTEEN YEAES AETER

TYNE COT CEMETERY

By J. G. Holmes, late N.Z.M.C. and R.B. •

No. VII. On. the Ypres side of Passehcndaela is the great Tyne Cot Cemetery. Within its area are two old pill boxes, now half hidden by flowering creepers. All ! the British cemeteries in the war zone are monumental. The smallest 'lias been built for permanence. Down on the Somme one will often see in tho middle of a distant field, quite away from village or farm, a little cluster of white headstones. There may bo threo hundred graves or fewer. They; are enclosed by a stone wall and are planted with shrubs and flowers. The rest of the ground is turfed. For en-* trance there is portico or arch. The Altar of Remembrance and the Cross of Sacrifice are there. The land is tho gift of the French nation, and that is recorded on a stono slab. Tliese littlo graveyards already have a. tranquil beauty which will bo enhanced as the trees and shrubs planted about them grow to maturity. The picture of this one or that one must bo fondly cherished by many who have been able to make a special pilgrimage to some one soldiers-grave. The Imperial War Graves Commission is well,discharging its trust.

The- Tyne Cot Cemetery is on a much vaster scale. Battle was morei concentrated in the Ypres salient than, on tho Somme. Hero have been gathered 12,000 dca.d. Their names under i their unite arc registered on monuI mental walls. On the headstones can [be found the badges of every British military unit, besides the emblems of jail the Dominions—the fern-leaf of New Zealand, Australia's rising sun of bayonets and banners, the maple leaf of Canada, tlJe springbok of South. Africa. Many Belgians of the countryside visit this cemetery on Sunday afternoons., They deeply admire the care the British have bestowed upon, the resting places of their dead. Yet it appears strange to some of them. that rich as well as poor families in British lands should have acquiesced in the burial of sons and brothers and husbands so far awaj'. To the Belgian. I'and to the French mind this was, in-, deed, a renunciation.

There are French military cemeteries in what was the British war zone. In these, plain wooden crosses • have to suffice for headstones. Already tho painted names are half obliterated on some of them. One would wish that a difference so .great did not mark the resting places of French and British soldiers, but then tho thought occurs that great as were the British losses, France has many more war dead to care for, that they are resting in their own liberated land, and that the monuments they would have most desired are the renewed villages and towns and their beloved countryside healed of all its war wounds. .

What of the German dead? They, '

too, gave their lives courageously for what they thought was a worthy cause, and are enrolled among the dedicated youth of 1914 : 18. One has noted that occasionally a German soldier has been, given a resting ,plaeo among the British. But tens of thousands of Germans also fell on British battlefields. In wartime niany were given graves in their own land. There are a.few Ger« man 'concentration cemeteries on French soil. Ono near Frieourt, on the Somme, is a sombre place. The crosses are of plain black wood. Most of them serve two graves. A name, a rank, and a number arc painted on each side of them. There are no flower beds. A carpet-of turf covers all the graves. Nothing in the nature of a general memorial inscription is to be seen. The \ nearest, approach to a monument are two largo bare slabs of yellow granite raised in paved alcoves at the head of the cemetery. But there are graves here, too, that hayo received their .pilgrims, and have tributes of individual remembrance. Wreaths of artificial flowers lie on some of them, and a few have had inscribed stones placed beneath the crosses. This graveyard, in its bare severity, is well tended. The soil of France now gives quiet sleep to both friend and foe.