Monday 18^th March 2019

We decided that we were going to have the day on the boat doing overdue jobs. After breakfast I washed and polished the portside and blacked the hull. This has needed doing for weeks. We moved in the ice back in February at Sutton Stop which had taken paint off the front at the waterline and this had started to rust.

Brenda went to the nearby Co-op. After she returned we painted the port gunwhale between us. This has annoyed us ever since the boat went into the water. The gunwhales were painted light grey and showed every mark. We had always wanted them black but Graeme had insisted on grey and by that stage of the build we had given up arguing with him. It looks so much smarter and completely transforms the look of the boat. We were delighted with the result. Now all we need to do is moor starboard side to and paint that side.

We walked into and around Fradley village. A very pleasant place and a nice feel to it, but lots of new builds as with everywhere else. At the church there was a Commonwealth War Graves Commission van. I had never seen one before. They had been tending graves in the churchyard. We spoke to the guys and they felt privileged to do the job they do, and always feel good about themselves at the end of the day. Good for them.

The church was a pretty building with decorative brickwork and a lovely Yew tree arch at the churchyard main entrance. The entrance porch of the church itself had an unusual feature, an inscription carved into it “Keep Thy Foot When Thou Goest To The House Of God”. 

 

There are 33 War Graves, all belonging to RAF and Australian Air Force personnel with, unusually, a German grave, one Joachim Schwarz, who was German aircrew and was killed in June 1941. The British and Australian graves are all aircrew from nearby RAF Lichfield, also known as Fradley Aerodrome, that was an operational training station from 1940 until 1958. Over the last 15 years a number of major developments have occurred, including industrial units and over 750 new homes, however virtually all of the hangars still exist and can be seen from the canal through the trees, the majority have been refurbished to be used for industrial purposes.

The story of German war dead in the UK is interesting. In 1959, the UK and German governments made an agreement about the future care of the remains of German military personnel and civilian internees of both World Wars, who at the time were interred in various cemeteries not maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It was agreed that the remains would be transferred to a single central cemetery established on Cannock Chase for this purpose.

This was completed in June 1967 and contains nearly 5,000 German and Austrian graves. A number of World War II Ukrainian volunteers captured when in German service are also buried here.
There are just over 1000 German World War II casualties buried elsewhere in the UK, of which Joachim Schwarz is one, who are interred in CWGC-administered plots, often near where their bodies were found or where they died.

We called in at the Co-op, again, as we decided to have comfort food on our knee for dinner, pizza and chips followed by vanilla ice cream and vanilla and passion fruit yoghurt. Not a thing we do often and as such is a treat.

Weather: a nice enough day with a few light rain showers.