Tyne Cot

[poliphilo]

Tyne Cot is the largest war cemetery in the Ypres salient. Also the largest Commonwealth war cemetery anywhere in the world. Its name (though this is disputed) originates in a soldierly joke about a captured German blockhouse looking exactly like a cottage on the river Tyne- back home in Blighty. Just down the road is the village of Passchendaele- now called Passendale- which was stomped into rubble in 1917. 

It is remarkable how the land has healed. The battlefields are farming land again. The villages- rebuilt so you could drive through and never guess what happened here- are just villages.  This is a very sleepy place.

Comments

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

I can't help but think of the poem...

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row...

These are very moving photos.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was reading somewhere recently that the Great War was the first war in which ordinary soldiers were honoured with individual graves.