This week I am continuing February's personal development theme with a World War One battlefield tour that sees me in Ypres. Last week it was Stafford and an excellent two-day preaching course and today it was the cemetery at the site of the largest evacuation hospital there was during the conflict - Lijssenthoek.
Tomorrow we have a full day of visits and this sets the scene for the rest of the week with the pinnacle being the Menin Gate on Thursday and some more visits on the the Friday.
I will be posting images and thoughts from the various places in the hope that they will be as much of a blessing to you as the places will be for me.
That said I was really touched by the fact that interspersed amongst the Commonwealth graves were very different headstones - these were square rather than rounded. It transpired that amongst our dead were members of the German forces who were given a Christian burial and are maintained along with those they fought against. I found this touching and full of integrity - reminding me to Attaturk's words of those who fell at Gallipoli - for they were now that's nation's sons having fallen there. Combatants who fell together and have become brothers in arms united by conflict and honoured in death.
The term 'squarehead' which I grew up with has its roots in the square headstones such as I saw in the cemetery today.
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