Unknown Soldier

The promise of sunshine and a hot day took me down to the coast near Southampton and the Royal Victoria Country Park.  The park occupies land along the Solent coast, once home to the Royal Victoria Hospital. 

The hospital was built in the 1860s, initially to treat soldiers wounded in campaigns taking place all over the world during the expansion of the British Empire. The hospital saw service throughout the two World Wars and over 3000 staff and patients, including 750 WW1 personnel, are buried in the adjacent cemetery.  It closed in 1958 and most of the buildings were destroyed by fire leading to their demolition in 1978, and today only the chapel remains of the main building.

I always find time to walk along the cemetery path, a raised banked path providing a fairly level route from the hospital through the woods, into the graveyard.  This is a peaceful shady area full of wild flowers and insects (though the butterflies are still lacking).  The WW military graves area with its rows of Commonwealth war graves is particularly poignant, especially the odd grave such as this containing the remains of a nameless German soldier buried along side his foes; equal in death