Today was our first day in Belgium. We did the usual tourist things like visiting the In Flanders Fields Museum in the restored Ypres Cloth Hall, and attending the moving Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate.
But the most surprising thing of the day was visiting the Bandaghem cemetery at Haringhe, just inside the Belgian border. Roger spotted this last night while researching where Granda was evacuated after his serious injury in September 1918.
Entrance to Bandaghem cemetery
We knew from the telegram that he had been evacuated to the 3rd Australian Casualty Clearing Station. At the time the CCS was based at the “Bandagehem” hospital site. This is about 20 km from Ypres, and not far from the other aptly named “Mendinghem” and “Dozinghem” hospitals.
Several of the members of Granda’s battalion were less fortunate and died at the hospital, and are buried in the nearby cemetery.
RIF graves in Bandaghem cemetery, of people fatally wounded at the same time as Granda.
It was sobering to realise that others wounded in the same action as Granda didn’t make it.