This year’s Remembrance Day marks the armistice agreement that ended the First World War on Monday, November 11, 1918, at 11 am. As usual people across the country will be commemorating those who died in the war, but being a centenary year it has even more significance.
It’s particularly poignant for our family, as our founder and patriarch, William Croxson, lost two children during the war.
Given the circumstances, my wife and I thought it was an ideal time for our children to visit the graves of their descendants, as well as see and understand the magnitude of the sacrifices of so many others who lived in that generation. We took the opportunity during the summer to visit two Commonwealth War Graves in France: first the Gorre British & Indian Cemetery near Calais, and then the large St Sever Cemetery in Rouen.
It was an important trip and one that the children embraced in their own way. Loving history as they did (particularly the eldest), they had the utmost respect for the graves they visited and saw it very much in the context of the Croxson family and our generations.
Whatever age you are, visiting the sites where conflict took place is a sobering and harsh reminder of those realities.