I’m afraid I can’t do anything but flinch when members of the UK’s present Government wax lyrical about our suddenly “wonderful” NHS. Pass the sick bucket.

(Especially egregious was the spectacle of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak applauding outside 10 Downing Street. A derisory photo-op if ever I saw one.)

This is the same NHS they cynically used to win a referendum on false pretences, that their political persuasion has been denigrating at every opportunity for almost as long as I can remember and that their Political Party has been deliberately running down for the past ten years in preparation for saying that it’s broken and must be sold off. Run down and underequipped so much that it’s not now in the state it could have been to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

Their attitude irresistibly reminds me of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, Tommy:-

O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s, “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s, “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play.

Almost the first thing we did after checking in to our hotel just 3 kilometres from Ypres was to visit Hooge Crater Cemetery which was literally just the other side of the Menin Road, and lies immediately below the Bellewaerde ridge. The circular area surrounding the cross represents the area’s many craters created by mines.

The first graves we came up to are dedicated to men either known or believed to be buried in this cemetery but whose exact grave location is unknown:-

One known soldier of the Great War and two who are in Kipling’s memorable phrase “Known Unto God”:

A memorial stone to men whose previously known graves were destroyed in subsequent battles:-

As in all Commonwealth War Cemeteries the graves are beautifully kept:-

The gravestones with regimental insignia on them are for individuals. The ones to the front here commemorate respectively five, five, five, five and four soldiers “Known unto God”:-

Grave Panorama. There are now 5916 Commonwealth soldiers buried in this cemetery of whom 3,570 are unidentified.

As the inscription on the alcove where the register of graves is kept says the cemetery is the free gift of the Belgian people for those who fell:-

The now peaceful scene looking back over the cemetery boundary into what was the Ypres Salient:-