Just before you split into component parts and headed for the sky? 
Happy Birthday BTW> 
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I have worked a a battlefield guide for some years: 1984-1986 and 2006-2012.
Two commemorative bottle, 40 years apart.
The first spell was the D-Day beaches and Normandy campaign. The second spell was The British Sector: Western Front WW1
The tours in the 1980’s included veterans. Three moments I particularly recall.
The American, then a brigadier, who was c/o of the US medical forward teams,. He came ashore on Omaha beach once the US troops had cleared it. As we walked up the dunes he said, “This is where I saw my first dead German”.
He also recounted how an orderly was sent to a nearby farmhouse to fetch water. He was gone so long that another was sent. He didn’t return either. My client sent a sergeant and a couple of GI’s to investigate.
Returning, the sergeant reported that both orderlies were dead, their throats cut. The sergeant and his men had killed the French people in the farmhouse.
Not all French were glad to see the Allies.
My client on D-Day +40, 05/06/1984, visiting the vast US cemetery at Colleville - s - Mer, stood looking down at a grave, that of his company sergeant. Except that at the time of his death he had been reduced to the ranks for persistent drunkenness. He’d wandered off in a drunken stupor and been picked off by a German sniper.
A German visitor noticed my client’s cap badge, 82nd Airborne. “We captured your c/o! But then you got him back because you captured us!”
Incredibly, we were joined by a Japanese veteran. To see these three old combatants, US, German and Japanese, chatting amicably together, was a wonder.
On another trip, my ex USAAF veteran, serving at a US airfield in Normandy, recounted how his kid brother went out on a mission in his P38 but did not return. My client, being in his 30’s and a very experienced pilot and aircraft engineer, was not risked in combat but served as instructor and supervisor of maintenance and arming.
He built himself a Solex-type bike, fueled from petrol from the aircrafts’ drip-trays. He soured the area as far as he could but found no trace of this brother.
As we motored thru’ France I happened upon a US cemetery I’d not known about. We called in. My client looked thru the register of names and found his brother. His brother’s name was also inscribed on a wall of those missing with no known grave. The register noted “Believed lost over Belgium”.
An emotional moment for the whole group.
I toured the WW1 British sector with my parents. We visited the graves of two uncles my father never knew.
Many clients on the WW1 tours had relatives’ graves to visit. One very elderly chap produced a 13-pounder shell case he said had come to him from his father, apparently it being the round which was the first to be fired in WW1 [22/08/1914] by an artillery unit of the B.E.F. His father was the lieutenant commanding a gun of ‘E’ Battery, Royal Horse Artillery.
I became involved with the RHA’s 100th anniversary commemoration of this action. There had been confusion ever since as to the exact position of ‘E’ Battery. The Battery diary simply noted ‘Near Bray’, a village in Belgium 10kms east of Mons.
Much research and a recce to Belgium resulted in establishing the exact position that ‘E’ Battery had take in support of a troop of Lancers sent as ‘first contact’ with the German army’s right wing.
I was honoured to be included in the commemoration on 22/08/2014. The Belgians gave us a slap-up buffet and beer celebration afterwards.
The story of the shell case continued. With my colleague and pal, Battlefield Bob, we visited the home of the fellow with the shell case. It stood pride of place by the fireside.
I took a photo of Bob and our man, who was proudly holding the shell case. Bob asked him if we could take the shell case outside to photograph it “because the light is better”
Once outside Bob, 30 years with the Glouc Constabulary and with the policeman’s nose for things, said, “Have a look at the inscriptions on the base” Oh my Gawd! Plain as day it was dated 1916! We didn’t tell the owner. He’d never looked, himself. He died not long after.
I saw a shell case in the Royal Artillery History Room at Larkhill. It was dated 1908. This was one of the three retained by 'E’Battery on the day and was confirmed a one of the three first rounds fired in WW1. We presumed that someone had substituted a 1916 case for the 1908 case and the owners never realised.
General Gough, commanding 3 Cavalry Brigade in August 1914, was present when ‘E’ Battery fired at the advancing Germans. The rounds were falling well short.
“Can’t you at least hit them!” said an exasperated Gen Gough.
“Sir, I cannot get another yard out of these guns” apologised the Battery Commander.
My theory is that this ammunition, made in 1908, had stood around in damp sheds in Aldershot for 6 years and was now well past it’s ‘Kill By’ date.
Of course, I have many more stories and a great many photographs but this will do for now.
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I have visited dozens of WW1 cemeteries, from the biggest at Tyne Cot, [11,900 graves] to the smallest - just a handful of grave stones in otherwise civil French graveyards. I have never come across one, nor heard of one, which is restricted in this way.
The CWGC cemeteries are indeed always immaculate. They are maintained by teams of gardeners, French, Belgian, Dutch etc, trained in UK and working for the CWGC. The plantings are all of species common to British gardens. Bear in mind that these cemeteries are, most if not all, land donated to Britain by the country concerned. They are, indeed,
… some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England.
The only sad exception I came across is The Stone Of Remembrance in the cemetery in Mons. It was grubby and stained. This shocked me because the day I was there was the commemoration of the 90th anniversary of The Armistice, 11:00 11/11/2008.
The cemetery is just a km or two from SHAPE. The ceremony included the most senior officers - Generals, Admirals, Air Marshalls et al - of all arms of all the Allied forces which fought The Axis, including Portuguese and Russian.
The Stone looked awful. I can only think that because that cemetery is a mix of CWGC and local Mons municipality, maintenance is in the hands of the municipality and nobody was charged with preparing the CWGC section for the ceremony. Put that man in the Guardhouse …
The cemetery just on the outskirts of Mons, at St Symphorien, is a must-visit. It is unique for a WW1 cemetery, being not on flat ground but in a park with trees and a hill. It’s very lovely
If you Google it you will see my description and a photograph taken on the RHA First Shots 100 Commemoration tour.
Note particularly the graves of the first and last British casualties of WW1. Poor Pte Parr - sent off on a bicycle to see if he could find the enemy …
It is sobering to consider that the commemorative marker of the first action of WW1 is across the road and about 50m from the marker commemorating the last action of WW1 by the BEF.
The G.O.C. US Expeditionary Force, Gen Pershing, hearing of the proposal for an armistice, said, “If we do not go on to Berlin now we will have to come back and do this all again”
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Tales well told!
All should visit Oradour sur Glanes especially if your commune has a population of about 600.
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Yes, I have been several times, very eerie and thought provoking.
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Oxymoron? 
No thanks, it would break me. Reading about it was bad enough.
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According to this, you’re right. Or wrong…
“A poll by the research firm French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) conducted in 2021 found that 51 percent of respondents said they do not believe in God, and 49 percent said they do.”
In the late 1970s I taught at a college of HE in Cheshire (Crewe & Alsager now long part of MMU).
Most lunchtimes we’d go for a drink (people used to do that in those days) at the delightful C17th White Lion at Barthomley a nearby picturesque village, where each table was made from a different wood and on the wall was a list of all the landlords over four centuries.
In summer one could sit outside and gaze across to the lovely old parish church where during the the English Civil War, the villagers had taken refuge and then been burnt alive by mercenaries.
There can’t be many WW 1 and 2 CWG s cemeteries I haven’t visited in France and the ones with graves of deserters always leaves me with mixed emotions.
My brother worked for the CWGC for many years as head of their works in the North and North West of France and often met up with the Duke of Kent for special ceremonies. He also oversaw a lot of the German cemeteries that both countries had agreed to regarding upkeep and of course, many foreign and other commonwealth plus a few US ones. I always remember him saying on his first day out in the field with the gardeners he just stood and cried for several minutes he was so touched. He also discovered graves of family members that no one had any idea where they had been laid to rest. After that, he was transferred to Israel to take care of the Palestine and other allied cemeteries but the unrest there made it far too dangerous to travel about in safety and he found another job back in the UK, plus my SIL was treated badly by the jews for how she dressed and other things they frowned upon
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An intentional contrast partially humorous, but yes, an oxymoron too.
If the stats you quote are correct, 49% believing in some kind of deity is very large, although not surprising based on the amount of religious symbology we see daily.
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Doesn’t necessarily mean they subscribe to any organised religion, of course. A vague belief in an all-powerful deity is sufficient for many folks I reckon. And probably always has been, even in eras and countries where attendance at the church/mosque/temple/stone circle is or was expected.
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Yes, and one of the reasons why religious folks are easily manipulated is because they often have some kind of belief without understanding the thing they have nominally subscribed to.
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When my son went for his citizenship interview he was asked about laïcité in his job as a teacher and nothing else. He gave it to the woman direct as his training had instilled in him that there was no religion in school here, it obviously worked as he got his French citizenship with no problems
… one of the reasons why “some” religious folks…
Yes, I should have been a little more detailed on that. It’s been a constant source of amazement over the decades how many go to church who have no idea what it’s all about (for example, this can be applied to other religions too).
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I met loads of Afghans in the course of my work years ago who claimed xyz was Islamic and pious on the grounds that grandpappy did it and actually no it was not Islamic at all just tribal custom
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Sounds a bit like Ireland…
I remember going to a mass in Kinsale when when I was about twelve and my mother remarking afterwards that it was the fastest mass she’d ever experienced.