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My job has been keeping me more than busy of late, and I regret not being out and about in the blogosphere more than I have been, but one must at times sleep, and at times relax. This past weekend I went for a walk in a local cemetery that I hadn't looked at closely in the past, simply to get out and breathe some fresh air and clear the head of cobwebs.
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In such places I find peace and quiet, and ample matter for consideration and reflection on the vicissitudes of life. One can learn about acceptance in cemeteries, acceptance of what is cruel and hard in the world, acceptance that we do not last forever, that there are some things that we can do absolutely nothing to change, and in accepting certain realities, one can perhaps better appreciate what we do have, and then make the most of it. And I love what graveyards reveal about history, about those who have gone before, who would otherwise lie forgotten, were it not for words carved on a stone, for a simple work of art created in memory of a departed soul. Even stones do not last forever, and as stones return to sand and dust, so do bones, so do bones.
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In this first, the sky and cross reflected on the surface of a glass globe serve to remind that
James' Weekend Reflections is in progress.
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Daniel Camus passed on in 1920 at the age 7 years 7 months. After surviving the hardships of the war years, then the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919 (which killed more people than the Great War did), his tombstone does not say what he died of. Angels Laid Him Away
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I couldn't help but think of Antoine de St Exupery who disappeared in 1944 over the Mediterranean off the south coast of France when I saw this sculpture on the tomb of Jean Pater, who died in 1940 at the age of 29. The graceful stone aircraft carving here reminded me of engravings of airplanes on several French postage stamps from the 1940s and '50s, images of which can be found, like most things these days, on the internet. A St Exupery memorial stamp was issued in 1948.
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A soldier from WWI...
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1927 to 1986...
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Marius Dufremelle died in the Argonne in July 1918. Just the name "Argonne" brought to mind immediately Robert William Service's poem The Man From Athabaska, which was beautifully set to music by Country Joe McDonald on his 1971 anti-war record. The stone here is slowly disintegrating, returning to sand. The verse in question says :
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"For I joined the Foreign Legion, and they put me for a starter
In the trenches of the Argonne with the Boche a step away;
And the partner on my right hand was an apache from Montmartre;
On my left there was a millionaire from Pittsburg, U. S. A.
(Poor fellow! They collected him in bits the other day.)"
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Paul Plessier, 29 years old, killed at Douaumont on 28 April, 1916 (a fort which was the scene of fearsome fighting at Verdun)
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So young, so young to be killed for his country...
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Stained glass in disrepair...
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