Visiting the Grave

Once a year, usually on this weekend. Mum likes to visit 'The Grave'.

Tucked away in the tiny Northamptonshire village of Dingley, near Market Harborough is the beautifully kept churchyard where my grandparents are buried.

The inscription on the headstone gives the details of their lives and also those of mum's older brother who was killed during the 2nd World War, when the Wellington Bomber, in which he was flying his first bombing raid, was shot down over France on the 13th February 1943.

Mum told today, of how she had to tell the news to her mother, who was herself gravely ill in hospital with cancer, - she died 2 months later.

This evening, with the help of our good friends Google and the internet, I was quickly able to establish that the uncle I never knew, was a radio operator in the Wellington III. Their destination was a bombing raid on the submarine base in Lorient, Southern Brittany, France, from where the Germans were causing huge losses to shipping in the Atlantic. All the crew was lost.

After the war, mum spent some time in Paris and one weekend she set off to find her brother's grave. She arrived by train in the deep Brittany countryside, where the station master lent her his bicycle and gave her directions to a small graveyard in a near by village. She was comforted to think his burial place was was so similar to the one in which he is remembered at home.

Subsequently, his remains were moved to the cemetery in the small town of Guidel, where there is a military section with 107 graves of RAF crews. I wish I had known this when I holidayed nearby on the coat of Brittany some 20 years ago. Perhaps one day I'll make the journey to his final resting place.

By coincidence, shortly before we reached the graveyard today, there was a flypast by a Spitfire - the only one still flying that was involved in the D day operations of 1944.

The unmistakable, deep rumbling sound of the Spitfire engine took us by surprise. It roared across the sky, waggling its wings in a wave, before disappearing. I got one shot of it, a dark dot against a white fluffy cloud, but I preferred this shot.

To all those brave young men:
We may not have known you,
But we still remember you.
With thanks.