Hi all, Been living up this way for over a year now and kept seeing the sign for Cannock War Cemetery but never took the time to pay it a visit, that was until now. It all started at 6.30am this morning, My determination to have a lay in was shattered by this little voice...Dad can I have another Easter egg...Dad can I have my breakfast, so much for the lay in. Did breakfast, got us washed, dressed and loaded the dog in the car. Off we went, we arrived at about 7.30 while the morning mist still lay there and abouts, not yet vaporized by the rising sun. Took the dog for her walk...hhmm walk have you ever known Springer Spaniel to walk?... me neither. We put her back in the car and off we went. The first cemetery you come to is the existing Commonwealth Cemetery, which with a rough guess has about over 300 graves, as we pushed the big iron gates they gave out a huge creek and with that two deer came running out of the woods, I must have crushed my little boy's fingers with the fright. After my heart rate had settled back to normal we strolled round the graves leaving our foot prints in the morning mist and with every step a great sense of sadness was felt. The majority of these graves in this cemetery are from WWI with only three that I counted from WW2, those being from the RAF. You've got a lot graves from New Zealand servicemen and about twenty or so from the old British regiments, which were disbanded after WWI. I would say that in this cemetery there are over 200 German graves. Hats off to the people of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for a very well kept cemetery. A few hundred yards further down the road you have the German War Cemetery which holds the graves of 2143 German servicemen of WWI and 2786 of WW2, all of whom died on UK soil. A very moving morning especially when my little boy asked: What are these stones for...they're soldiers I said...are they the bad soldiers Daddy. I squeezed him tightly in my arms and we made our way back to the car once again leaving our foot prints in the morning mist.
