ON THE SOMME.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 31 January 1929, Page 4

ON THE SOMME.

NEW ZEALAND WAP GRAVES. HAWEIU VISITOR’S IMPRESSIONS. About 40 miles' by a. perfect road from Messines will bring the traveller in France to one of the large military cemeteries, Caterpillar Valley, where (lie buried 6000 of the youth of the overseas Dominions and the Old Country. • In an account of Mrs Cramp’s tour of France, given in the “Star,’ a j wrong impression in regard to the condition of the cemetery was inadvertently conveyed. Mrs Cramp' says that the cemetery 7 is most, beautiful, a mass of lovely gardens, with blooms of many kinds and varieties, all well grown and carefully tended. Each section, be it New Zealand, Canadian or any of the six countries represented, was marked off carefully with a handsome monument erected as a memorial of the sacrifice made by the ■ men of that country. Prominently displayed was the national emblem of each country, with the fern leaf lor New Zealand, making each section perfectly distinct from . the others. The graves are m rows, two headstones wide, backing upon one another, with a trim, well-kept pathway between each two rows. They 7 were the graves of all men who fell in and around the Somme Valley. The wellkept road was bordered on both sides by lovely trees. The country round was farmed and in crops, with the evidences of the ravages of war almost completely gone and showing how the people had settled down to their work once more. It was good, said Mrs Cramp, to see the neat, well-tended cemetery, a tribute to the memory of our soldiers, and a reminder to New Zealanders that the place where their own people lie will ever he in safe keeping.