WELL CARED FOR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 263, 7 November 1945, Page 4

WELL CARED FOR

SOLDIERS' PLOT IN FRANCE (0.C.) Marton, Nov.-6. Mr. and Mrs. W. Burgess, Marton, have received a letter from Mademoiselle Jaouen, France, describing a soldiers’ plot in which their son, Sergeant Burgess, lies burled with other members of the crew of a ’plane which crashed in November, 1942. The plot is in the vicinity in which the writer resides, and which she has been responsible for since 1940. The plot Was laid out in June, 1940, some days before the departure of the British Forces. “The plot contains 344 graves. The people of La Baule, Pornicket, La Pouliquen, visit the graves and tend them with care,” states the letter. "The cemetery is well planned and contains many flowers.”

"Since I am anxious, as far as possible, to take the place of all you who mourn them, and I want to do my best," says the writer, “I have a Mass celebrated every second month. Each grave is bordered with a strip of turf, and they are planted with rose bushes and red geraniums. “We received many congratulations on the occasion of the liberation of our territory. We are all the more appreciative of them because, through your son, and as a soldier of the war of 1914, you have links and memories in France.”

A French mother Mme. L. Lavalie, whose husband was killed in the war of 1914, forwards her maternal greetings in their common sorrow and assured all parents in New Zealand whose loved sons sleep in the little cemetery of Escoublac-cuy that their graves will not be forgotten and there will always be kind and grateful hands to keep them green. Several photographs of the cemetery were also received and names are readable on the crosses.