Forgotten Heroes

(N.B. I initially posted this as a post in my ‘707’ thread in error)

Not quite sure why, but felt I had to post this…

I have just got back from a couple of days business in Romania, and on one of the car journeys I was suprised to be driven past what looked to be a CWGC Cemetary on the road that heads north out of Bucharest towards Ploesti. Had it been a US military cemetary I would have been less surprised, knowing the USAF attacked the oil refineries at Ploesti in an attempt to reduce oil and fuel supplies to the German forces.

Unfortunately I did not have time to ask the driver to stop, though it was his comment in broken English that brought it to my attention as we sped past. I realised I knew little, if anything of why it would be there, and I was also suprised that it seemed to contain quite a few headstones.

A little stumbling around the CWGC website this morning finally tracked down the site, the cemetary is described as Bucharest, though is actually 16km north of Otopenei Airport on the main road away form Bucharest towards Ploesti. It apparently contains 91 casualties, 81 of whom were WW2 Commonwealth aircrew and 2 were WW2 soldiers. The remainder of the casualties are predominantly Naval and date back to WW1, though it seems there is also a memorial to a lone WW1 Indian soldier.

The CWGC webpage gives a little more background to matters such as the formation of the Balkan Air Force which operated out of Greece, Italy and later Yugoslavia to attack the Romanian Oil facilities in WW2, and which consisted of Commonwealth, US, Greek, Yugoslavian and Italian Squadrons.

Having browsed through the list of casualties commemorated at the cemetary I was (as ever) humbled to see how young so many of them were when they died. Being buried so far from “home”, and in waht was until fairly recently a fairly “closed” country, I suspect the cemetary receives few visitors, though perhaps the forthcoming addiiton of Romania to the EU may change this

If I’m back in the area as hoped next year then I’ll try and find time to pay my respects. In the meantime then my note here may perhaps serve to ensure those brave men are not forgotten……

Paul F