Field trip today... Went to Kranji Commonwealth War Cemetery, and as a result, am in a wonderful mood to write something.. poetic. :P

The cemetery and war memorial are built in such a way that the front section is the Christian section; all the white officers are there, that is. So you walk in, and graves stretch in both directions from this wide grassy aisle leading all the way up to the memorial, but two thirds of the way up, there's a large cross in the middle of the aisle with a round base.

See if you can visualise this: you're standing at the cemetery entrance, and there's a large stone that you have to go around with "Their Name Liveth Forevermore" engraved into it. It's sunny out, very few clouds, and the wind picks up at times. And as you're looking up the slight incline of the hill, glancing over the numerous graves, your gaze passing the large cross, moving to the memorial that dominates the backdrop of the cemetery with it's two "wings" housing walls bearing 24000 names, your gaze gets drawn back down; there's something glinting at the base of the large cross in the middle of the grassy aisle.

The wind blows again, and the glinting thing flutters; plastic wrapped around a bunch of flowers placed at the foot of the cross.

And in the cemetery, there're little flowering and non-flowering shrubs grown in between headstones, but given that they're so small, they don't catch the wind much; so right then, that fluttering plastic around a lonely bunch of flowers around the base of the large cross is the only movement in the cemetery.

And it's really quite beautiful.

And even more sadly beautiful is the fact that some of the graves don't have names; all they say is "A Soldier of the 1939-1945 War" and the epitaph below is "Known Unto God", or for the non-Christian graves, they say something like "A Soldier of the Gurkha Regiment is Honoured Here".

For those that're lucky enough to have names, the epitaphs at the bottom of the headstones are all different; and all the named officers' headstones are decorated with their respective countries' armed forces' crests or their regiment insignia.

And at the back, at the side of the cemetery, families of officers are buried there; a good number of them are just low stones set into the ground, bearing a name and a date of death-- these are for the children, the Gurkha officers' children, and the strange thing is that the standard for these low stones is that there's the child's name, and it's followed by "daughter/son of.." but there, it's usually a rank and a number. So all those stones say "'so-and-so', daughter of 'Sgt 021446735'", and it's followed by the date of death.

And there're more elaborate stones for the white officers' children; I suppose because they could afford it-- some of them are actually white marble instead of the smooth concrete used for most of the headstones in the cemetery. A lot of the children were less than five years old when they died. One headstone was for a "newly born baby", and there was a another one, a girl who died not long after she was born; the dates of birth and death on the stone were 22nd July 1966, and well, *my* birthday's on the 22nd of July, so when I turned around and saw that stone.. well, it was mildly interesting. :)

Didn't have much time though... Only half an hour. Didn't have time to look at the walls on the right side of the memorial; was trying to find Lt Adnan Saidi's name, after we'd spent the morning at Bukit Chandu; the Bukit Chandu museum's quite a nice place, really. Also learned from there this morning that Kent Ridge is sort of a battle site. Which means that NUS is sitting on ground that should be commemorated, or have a memorial built on it, or something. :P

On a side note; went back to NUS after the trip, and found that the rest of the 25th MC had finished cleaning up the room; was hoping that they'd have at least a bit left that I could help with, but, oh well. The room looks LOVELY now, anyway. :D