How poignant are these military cemeteries. As Sam Brooks points out, always laid out in parade like rows and groups, whether in the large CWGC cemeteries overseas or the more intimate village churchyards of the UK. Just like Keith Gosling's grave, my father's has precise co-ordinates; Yokohama War Cemetery, Plot K, Row D, Grave 8, British Section. My mother received this information in a letter from the Imperial War Graves Commission, Melbourne, Australia together with a brochure containing photos of the different national plots there and and the Cross of Remembrance that overlooks so many such cemeteries worldwide. She was never able to visit it but I was fortunate enough to have a day off on a stopover at Tachikawa, then a USAF base near Tokyo, and was able to do so.
I took the short train ride to the Port of Yokohama and using the locality map in the brochure made my way up to the cemetery. It is laid out on a hillside above the town and, as one would expect, is immaculate albeit the grass had turned brown at the time. So I found the plot, then the row, and counted off the graves. Suddenly I was confronted by a bronze plaque bearing my name well, my surname and our shared first initial actually, together with the service number, rank, date of death, and the Royal Artillery badge (he was in a LAA TA battery). It really pulled me up short to be at his graveside having concentrated so much on getting there and finding it that I had given little thought on what I would feel or even do. I gathered myself, stood in silence (I forget, but probably at attention, it comes so naturally at times like this if you've served), said a few words, and took photographs of the grave and the cemetery for my mother. It was all eerily quiet despite the surrounding habitation, though Google Maps shows much more development since then, with a motorway on one side of the cemetery and a children's playground on the other so I doubt that is still the case. I signed the visitors book in the small stone shelter near the entrance and made my way back in good time to reassure my captain that he still had a full crew for our return journey to Changi.
Since then my wife and two sons have visited Japan and stood at the graveside themselves to pay their respects to a grandfather they never knew. War is an abomination and its curse lasts generations, but the CWGC does wonderful work worldwide to give solace to all who visit its sombre cemeteries. A noble duty and very well done!