At Tyne Cot Cemetery at the 50th anniversary of Passendale ,a lady was franticly rushing round looking for her father’s grave ,we advised her there was book with all the names and grave plots in it .
She was on a bus tour and the whistler blew for passengers to rejoin their coaches .
Her father was John Strachey of Royal Inniskillin Fusiliers.
She gave a date etc.17 October 1917,50 years before. .
We could not find him at Tyne Cot.
A little further down the road to Ypres we stopped at a tiny cemetery where graves were random ,not in straight lines and there he was .
We had no means of contacting his daughter .
Later such from tiny cemeteries bodies were moved and re interred in bigger ones.
A few years later we enquired of the CWGC on Elverdinghe Straat ,Ypres,opposite St,George’s English Church.
Gave name ,regiment and date ,and asked where he was as the little cemetery had gone .
We were told no such soldier existed, only one if that name a Canadian ,who had not been killed.
We explained the meeting at Tyne Cot ,the grave in the tiny cemetery so there was more than one man named John Strachey, ,but no, they were adamant.
My husband remembered ,I did and our two sons, so——
I mean who of my generation could forget the man whose Groundnut scheme failed so woefully !- so it was easy to remember the soldier’s name .
They are very good but on that occasion not so.
Viktoria.
