“FOREVER ENGLAND.”

Taihape Daily Times, 10 September 1919, Page 3

“FOREVER ENGLAND.”

' The War Oflice is recruiting 15,000 men at high ratc,~:; of pay for very important work in France and Belgium. They require this large number of ‘volunteers to cope with the enormous itask of recovering and re—in’Eerring the vast host. of warriors who were buried in out~of-the-way places. Remember there are more dead soldiers lying on shell—torn ground. among parapets, by the side roads and in otherout—of—tlle-way places than] constituted the whole of the British Army in 1914. M ' Over 350,000 British soldiers are interred in the 1200 graveyards that dot. the battlefields. These are in regular cemeteries. which will E-'):r' ever remain “little bits of Enzglandf’ One hundred and fifty thousand are sfilll outside these resting places, and it is‘ the work of the Graves Registtntion Department of the Wal' Olfice to recover this vast host and reverently re-inter them among their conirades. No German prisoners are to be employed in this sacred Work. It. is undertaken by British ;oldiers, and unless it is undertaken speedily the battlefields will be ploughed up and the bones of dead lien-. 05 will mingle‘ with the soil. In ‘the course of a recent lonzr motor tour over the battlefields of Bbigiuni and France I saw thousands of little graves standing anl<m,r..: .»llell—liul-2:; and broken trenches. Scientific experts have simed that vegetatipn can never grown in ear-1:11 stained by high explosives. I cm as.~:ure‘them that tehy are Wrong. Na ture has alre:ld_\i cover=.:l up the battlefields with rank grass, nettles six feed high. and a vast profusion of yellow flowering shrubs. —~R. in the London I<3xl:-res.-s_