In An English Country Churchyard

I decided to go up to Theydon Garnon last night to take some photos in the churchyard and, as you do, I read some of the inscriptions on the gravestones, each one a message reaching out and telling us something about the lives less ordinary lived by ordinary people.
Some of them are heartbreakingly simple - a name and a pair of dates that tell you that there is a family mourning the loss of a child after a few brief hours of life. Others tell of a long and rich life with all manner of twists and turns each marked by another wife or husband. Then, for me the saddest of all of the graves, a slightly unkempt war grave, unvisited and forgotten because the man who lies beneath was the end of the family line, but each with an untold story, and now resting forever in the pleasant green countryside they fought and died to protect, believing in that their cause was just.