Remembering ...

Our visit to the museum complete, we left Albert and headed into the surrounding countryside to visit some of the war graves and battlefield sites.

Of particular interest to us was the Thiepval memorial to the missing of the Somme.


This imposing piece of architecture bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died in the Somme area before 20 March 1918, and have no known grave.

72,000 sounds a lot, and believe us, as you stand under the roof of the memorial, close enough to read the names, you find there are so, so many, that the tragic loss of life really hits home anew. And then when you think about all the thousands of Commonwealth war graves, for known soldiers, which are in addition to all these thousands of names, the reality becomes so horrifying that you begin to wonder if you will ever smile again.

Anyway, our interest in Thiepval was that we were looking for one particular name, that of a young man from a neighbouring village to us. Amongst all those thousands of names, we found it, one F W Eke, from the small Norfolk village of Hindolveston.


Earlier today, since today is Remembrance Sunday, we remembered Mr Eke again, this time at the Hindolveston war memorial. As we gathered for the act of remembrance and two minutes silence, we again saw his name carved into a memorial, this time one much closer to the home he was never to see again.


And as we remembered the fallen this morning, we learnt one very interesting fact about Mr Eke. The house where he lived in Hindolveston, was the very house where some very good friends of ours now live. We hadn't known this previously, as the house is no longer called by the name mentioned in the war graves registers.


So today, Remembrance Sunday was particularly poignant for us as we gave thanks for the heroic acts of so many young men and one young man in particular.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

We Remember ....

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them".


Today we remembered the Fallen at our village war memorial. Our Act of Remembrance was particularly poignant this year because of Remembrance Sunday falling on the 11th November.

We had joined in the village service but had stayed on, as a Bears Unlimited group, to remember the casualties who tend to get forgotten, namely the horses who died on active service. Being an eclectic collection of bears, dogs, sheep, monkeys and so on, we love animals of every kind and find the loss of all those courageous horses really tragic.

Our concern for these, largely forgotten, casualties of war, has led us to adopt the Brooke equine charity as one of our corporate charities. This charity was founded by a lady called Dorothy Brooke after she came across hundreds of emaciated horses being used as beasts of burden on the streets of Cairo in 1930. When she discovered they were ex-cavalry horses of the British, Australian and American forces and had all seen service in the First World War before being sold into a life of hard labour in Cairo when the conflict ended in 1918, she was so moved by their plight that she founded the Brooke Charity to buy these animals their freedom.

Today the Brooke helps horses and donkeys all over the world and is an international equine lifesaver. The charity works in Egypt, India, Pakistan, Jordan, Israel (Palestinian villages in Israel and the West Bank), Afghanistan, Kenya, Ethiopia and Guatemala, relieving suffering, and probably most importantly, educating the owners of these animals, who genuinely don't believe their animals feel pain or need water and shade. It breaks our hearts to think of donkeys collapsing under enormous loads in the heat, desperate for a drink and then being hit with a stick instead of being the care and the water they desperately need. And so, we raise money to support the work of the Brooke and we hope our readers will check out their website and consider doing the same.


So, back to where we started, we remember ... lest we forget.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx