Day 8 - Public holiday in France!

Up bright and early to walk out to Dud Corner Cemetery and the Loos Memorial. One hour ten minutes outside of Lens (by foot) gets me to the Memorial to my Great uncle Cpl. Frank Hallam and the Memorial to Hedley Thomas Hatch whose name is on the Menheniot war memorial.

Cpl. Frank Hallam Cheshire regiment killed in action near Vimy Ridge, May 1916.

The Royal British Legion cross for Great Uncle Frank - probably the closest thing to a headstone he's ever had.

20,654 men have memorials here, there bodies having never been found and another 1,812 are buried here.

H. T. Hatch of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry.

Dud Corner Cemetery / Loos Memorial

I followed this visit with a quick March back to Lens station to try and understand why my carefully planned train connections to Mons in Belgium did not exist?

Who was to know the 01st November is a holiday in France!

So, best train connection is four changes arriving in Mons at 1612hrs and having 1 hour of daylight to walk 25 km.

No bus services.

The holiday explains the late night revelry that was going on outside my hotel window last night, but I'm faced with falling half a day behind on my schedule and sleeping rough tonight (what fool sent the hammock home as not required?)

I wander towards a lone taxi and ask the driver and ask how much it will cost to Lille (where I am assured train connections exist that will get me to Mons for 1412hrs).

The driver looks solemn, explains that as it is a holiday it is going to be 100 Euros.

I consider the options and shake hands with him. He spends the next ten minutes of the drive telling me how it must be his lucky day (Ying and Yang sir, Ying and Yang).

As I watch the meter tick away, his wife phones to ask where he is, there is no work on a holiday? He explains the situation on the hands free and I imagine she went off to buy Steak and Champagne for their dinner.

So, I arrive in Lille 100 Euro lighter and feeling a bit proud of myself, you see dear reader, the taxi driver had under estimated the fare and I refused to pay more than the price agreed..Ha ha ha, I was 65 cents up on the deal! I hurried off to spend my profit.

Now, 31 years a railway man should have allowed me to recognise the 'can't be bothered to help you' and the 'I'm very smiley but I don't know shit from shinola' types (old and new railway if you will), but whether it was the tiredness or the fact they were French (where both types often apply to all people), I missed it.

The upshot of my error (looking back now I have reached days end) was that I did a mini railway tour of Belgium, having to make 3 changes where one should / would have sufficed, I'm pretty sure that taxi was unnecessary too!

All I can say is thank goodness for Belgium railway employees...everyone of them as helpful as could be.

Arriving at Mons, Belgium, I March off to the Mons (Bergen) Cemetery and visit the last two GWR colleagues whose graves I'll see this trip (one from St. Austell, the other from Paddington) and find in the same Cemetery 72 Russian graves and 8 Romanian (taking the nation's whose dead I have visited to 10).

Then I walk to St Symphorien Cemetry.

Beautiful, Serene, Emotional and Fitting.

The first British casualty of the war (John Parr - 21st August 1914) lies directly opposite the last British casualty (George Ellison - 0930hrs 11th November 1918).

Four years and four months desperate their Deaths but four meters separate their graves. (George Ellison's headstone is behind the left end of my Rucksack, the headstone in the foreground is that of John Parr)

A few pages further on we find the grave of a Peter Bender, believed to be the last German casualty of the Great war, his headstone reads +10/11/1918.

A few more paces brings us to the headstone of George Lawrence Price the last Canadian to die. His headstone simply gives the date of death as 11/11/1918, the time (10:58hrs) just two minutes before the Armistice came into effect (and nearly five and a half hours after it was signed) is not shown.

Unlike any other Cemetery, turfed pathways work there way through high hedges, opening onto a small clearing with a handful of headstones. Then a few paces on, a semi circle of headstones, then a square plot of German headstones.

This maze like layout continues until you reach the Great Cross and obelisk, facing each other a top the hill.

German obelisk faces the Allied Great Cross on the crest of St. Symphorien Military Cemetery

In life ordinary men thrown at each other forced to kill or be killed in service of their countries.

In death; sons, husbands and brethren, the casualties of governments and their leaders haste to settle disputes through war.

I thank them all for the service and sacrifice that they made, changing our world. May they rest in peace.

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