Where did the day go ?

All we did was visit Tyne Cot Cemetery

It's the war cemetery biggest in the world, WW1

It doesn’t look very big but here are a lot of graves here, many with no names on (known unto God)

It is a sad place to walk around reading the names or just seeing a soldier only know to god there are too many of them, they gave their life, but we don't know who they are

There are graves from all over the commonwealth, and a lot of Kiwi’s and Aussies, Canadians, all with the same motif

There are a couple of walls with names on three of those that died and are buried in mass graves

There are 11,956, of which 8,369 are unnamed, graves

There is a lump of concrete, it don’t look much but that was a major pillbox, it wasn’t just used for firing, it was also an aid station

I found out this about Tyne Cot and how it got its name

The name "Tyne Cot" is said to come from the Northumberland Fusiliers seeing a resemblance between the many German concrete pill boxes on this site and typical Tyneside workers' cottages (Tyne cots)

Tyne Cot CWGC Cemetery lies on a broad rise in the landscape which overlooks the surrounding countryside . As such, the location was strategically important to both sides fighting in the area. The concrete shelters which still stand in various parts of the cemetery were part of a fortified position of the German Flandern I Stellung which played an important role in the area during the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917.

On 4 October 1917, the area where Tyne Cot CWGC Cemetery is now located was captured by the 3rd Australian Division and the New Zealand Division and two days later a cemetery for British and Canadian war dead was begun. The cemetery was recaptured by German forces on 13 April 1918 and was finally liberated by Belgian forces on 28 September.

After the Armistice in November 1918, the cemetery was greatly enlarged from its original 343 graves by concentrating graves from the battlefields, smaller cemeteries nearby and from Langemark

The cemetery grounds were assigned to the United Kingdom in perpetuity by King Albert I of Belgium in recognition of the sacrifices made by the British Empire in the defence and liberation of Belgium during the war .

The Cross of Sacrifice that marks many CWGC cemeteries was built on top of a German pill box in the centre of the cemetery, purportedly at the suggestion of who visited the cemetery in 1922 as it neared completion

^]The King's visit, described in the poem The Kings Pilgrimage included a speech in which he said:

We can truly say that the whole circuit of the Earth is girdled with the graves of our dead. In the course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon Earth through the years to come, than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.

— King George V, 11 May 1921

The cemetery was designed by Sir Herbert Baker The land on which the cemetery stands is the free gift in perpetuity of the Belgian people to those who are honoured here

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The UK missing lost in the Ypres Salient are commemorated at the Menin Gate and the Tyne Cot Memorial . Upon completion of the Menin Gate memorial to the missing in Ypres builders discovered it was not large enough to contain all the names as originally planned.

They selected an arbitrary cut-off date of 15 August 1917 and the names of the UK missing after this date were inscribed on the Tyne Cot memorial instead.

Additionally, the New Zealand contingent of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission declined to have its missing soldiers names listed on the main memorials, choosing instead to have names listed near the appropriate battles. Tyne Cot was chosen as one of these locations^]

Unlike the other New Zealand memorials to its missing, the Tyne Cot New Zealand memorial to the missing is integrated within the larger Tyne Cot memorial, forming a central apse in the main memorial wall. The inscription reads: "Here are recorded the names of officers and men of New Zealand who fell in the Battle of Broodseinde and the First Battle of Passchendaele October 1917 and whose graves are known only unto God" .

The memorial contains the names of 33,783 soldiers of the UK forces, plus a further 1,176 New Zealanders.

Three British Army Victoria Cross recipients are commemorated here

Lieutenant Colonel Philip Bent (1891–1917)
Corporal William Clamp (1891–1917)
Lance Corporal Ernest Seaman (1893–1918)