Whilst the Remembrance Day Services are still fresh in your mind I have posted four pictures below. Taken in a cemetery in Saltburn in Cleveland, England they belong to four servicemen. I have no idea who they are beyond the names on the stone or what they did or how they died or indeed anything else about them. There were no services at their grave, no parades in their memory, no poppy wreaths laid on the cold, wet ground, no religious words or prayers - if you believe in religious words and prayers. I don't. Nothing to tell of their history, their lives or their endeavours.
These white headstones standing anonymously amongst all the others in the graveyard, untended, unkempt, forgotten, with the dead Autumn leaves gathered at the base, fallen from the skeletons of trees surrounding them are the only visible reminder of them having lived and died at all.
So next time, as the parades take place around the country and our political leaders are seen in all the right places and the religious leaders say their piece and our royals do their thing spare a thought, brief or otherwise for these forgotten reminders, scattered around the country of what it's all really about, of what is really important.
2nd Lieutenant GA McNeal - Royal Signals - Died 26th June 1940
2nd Lieutenant Wilhelm Jacobus K Knoll - Royal Air Force - Died 20th May 1916
Sapper CP Aitken - Royal Engineers - Died 23rd August 1918
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