14. We're here because they're here......

Bailleul - France

Tiny chapel at cemetery entrance

Laundry day.  Late start then into Bailleul with a huge load for three machines simultaneously in the laundrette - all very French and thanks to the local for showing us the ropes.  While the washing was in progress we visited the Bailleul Community Cemetery and Extension.  Bailleul was the headquarters for the NZEF's tunnelling division, where the devastating mines under the German trenches at Messines were directed.  Bailleul was the focus of intensive fighting with over one hundred thousand shells directed at the town during the battles. There was nothing left.  The community cemetery is typically French and charming and the extension typical War Graves, immaculate and moving.  Fascinating conversations with a  number of locals tending graves and a Monumental Mason repainting lettering on a family grave.

Visiting the Extension we focused on one grave to give it some meaning.  Looking up the number we found excellent, moving, information.

Iris, Audrey and I sang We're here because they're here to mark the moment.  We have been enjoying singing it in the car also as it has played a number of times on the BBC Voices from the First World War Podcast.

We also enjoyed poking around the older parts of the cemetery with the various crypts and impressive tombs.

Grabbed some lovely pastries walking back to the laundrette then dropping Jacqueline at the supermarket we went on to a hardware store for some sealant as the bathroom sink is leaking in the, as Douglas refers to it, Giantavan.

This side faces Belgium

The cloche with to gun openings and periscope hole on top

For interest we programmed a different route back to the campsite and discovered, four hundred metres up the road, in a field, a blockhouse?, complete with cloche on top.  I biked to it and ventured through the barbed wire at the roadside and explored.  Above the entrance, steel door gassed off, it said 1938.  Looking up Wikipedia my guess was confirmed that this was part of the Maginot Line,  It was open to explore and there were some 30mm casings but they were earth encrusted so I guess from the local fields.  I was not able to climb into the cloche as the ladder and platform had collapsed but I was able to find a way on top of the structure.