schoutbynacht

At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.

I am back. Last time was 19 years ago, and I wrote about it here. It’s in Norwegian, but you can run it through Google translate.

This time I used Google and Maps to find it, and they were not very helpful, but I found it on the second attempt. Last time it was entirely by chance that I saw the signpost as we drove past. It’s almost invisible, and the cemetery is also very small. Today it nestles between some fields, a football pitch and someone’s vegetable garden, where someone was tending their vegetables.

It looks a bit forlorn hidden away here in the midst of other people’s daily lives. Any cemetery is a shrine to lived lives, but a war cemetery is also a testament to lives cut short. Some of the men who were buried here were 19, many were in the mid 20-ies. Some were already fathers. Others were probably virgins. They number 256 in all, which is a neat number, 2 to the power of 8, or 16 by 16. 8 bits, if you like. No less than 66 were from South Africa. What compelled them to come here and die? Judging by their names, some where Boers.

I was less moved this time than last. Or was I? It was both good to be there again, and a bit anti-climactic. I had been there before, after all. It’s my secret part of Toscana.

While I was there my family went shopping at “Valdichiana Outlet Village”. It gets rather more visitors than this forgotten cemetery where someone’s relative is buried. There’s not much left of them now after all these years, but the lawn and the flower beds are immaculately kept. As you can tell from the photos, the sun was indeed going down when I was there.

In 2004 I did not bring my camera, but this time I took some photos. I had completely forgotten what it looked like, except the small house, which in my memory was at the far end of the cemetery. Here are the rest of the photos I took.

Here is the official page for the cemetery.