Walking in Belgium

[anglomedved]

It was unseasonably warm this Sunday afternoon. It would have been a sin to stay indoors, even for Live Journal dialogues. So I drove out into the country north-east of the old university city of Leuven and then went walking. My route took me past some of Belgium’s only vineyards. The grapes were small but tasty.

 I looked into the local village church at Houwaart. Inevitably it was locked. I started talking to an old woman outside the church in Dutch (the language of northern Belgium). She couldn’t place my accent and asked me whether I was from Holland. No, I said, I'm from England. And she pointed me to some English war graves.

 The English war graves of both the first and second world wars are of identical pattern, in England, in France, in Belgium. And they are all very well looked after.  When you see a group of three or four gravestones together in a Belgium graveyard, you can be almost sure that it is an airplane that came down, probably on a bombing raid to Germany.

 I always get a lump in my throat when I see war graves. I don’t know why: I have lived outside England all my adult life and tend to steer clear of English circles here. I guess it something instinctive, deep inside. Perhaps also I am now part of the older generation, that is of the generation which keeps the memories of any people. What is frightening is just how young these men were. The pilot of one of the two planes which came down at Houwaart was just 19 (my own sons are 20 and 18). At 19 I could not yet drive a car, let alone fly an airplane. But it is right that we keep the memory and the graves tidy. Requiescant in pace.