The RHF Veterans’ Battlefield Tour part 3

A slightly more serious note from our Errant Chronicler in this post:

Bugle was on parade with the Veterans at the memorial service at Becklingen War Cemetery, situated in the small village of Becklingen, which lies in the north of Germany approximately 85kms north of Hannover.

The site of Becklingen War Cemetery was chosen for its position on a hillside overlooking Luneburg Heath. Luneburg Heath was where, on 4 May 1945, Field-Marshal Montgomery accepted the German surrender from Admiral Doenitz.

Burials were brought into the cemetery from isolated sites in the countryside, small German cemeteries and prisoner of war camps cemeteries, including the Fallingbostel cemetery, within a radius of about 80 kilometres. Most of those buried in the cemetery died during the last two months of the war.

Becklingen War Cemetery contains 2,374 Commonwealth burials of the Second World War, 97 of them unidentified. There are also 27 war graves of other nationalities, many of them Polish.

John Lamont, a WWII veteran, visited the graves of two of his pals from The Highland Light Infantry: Dougie McDonald and Henry Baker, both of whom were sadly killed near Soltau just three weeks before the end of the war in Europe.

The Errant Chronicler.