France - Borre and Bailleul

Our first stop today was a small cemetery in Borre. We had reloaded our file, so we knew exactly where to look for Edgar Reynold Townsend.

Borre British Cemetery

The headstone on the right belongs to a Belgian soldier. Note the different shape

The spacing of the graves is interesting - sometimes separated, sometimes very close to each other

The second of today's two soldiers, Albert Edward James Merriman, lies in the Outtersteene Communal Cemetery Extension - an add-on to the normal town cemetery. What we noticed about this cemetery was the large number of unidentified soldiers. In the row of 60 in which Merriman lies, 47 were unknown. Of all the burials, 892 were known and 497 unknown.

Writing in the Guest Book

A member of the Chinese Labour Corps. We hadn't realised that there were Chinese involved in the war

The graves of two French soldiers

The other interesting thing here - up the back were a number of headstones saying: "Known to be buried in this cemetery" or "Believed to be buried in this cemetery".

This soldier was also very interesting. "Believed to be" Tom Corby, and at the bottom it says he was found in Merris (a village within 3km) in 2003.

We continued on to the town of Bailleul (pronounced By Earl) and had a look around.

La Mairie, the Town Hall

And a giant statue inside

A ruined chapel as a war memorial

And around the back

We wandered through the church. Inside, the story of Bailleul was told by 28 stained glass windows. Only the last referred to the Great War.

And a picnic lunch in the park