Brenda and Kemm Baber
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Kemm and Brenda Baber first became interested in war graves when in Arnhem in The Netherlands for the Airborne Reunion in 2010. The memorial service at the Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery was an extremely moving ceremony with the local school children all taking part and laying flowers on every gravesite of the cemetery as part of the service. From Wikipeadia: The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records 1759 graves in the cemetery as of 2004. 1432 of these are Commonwealth, including British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealanders. The cemetery is also the last resting place of 73 Polish soldiers, (many of them exhumed and moved from Driel, to the disappointment of Driel's residents) and 8 Dutch civilians - some killed in the fighting and some former Commission employees. 253 of the graves are unidentified. Kemm is now retired but was in the Air Dispatch Squadron as OC for a number of years and is now on committee of the Australian Air Dispatch Association (www.adaa.net.au ). Brenda has an ongoing interest in photography and on discovering that TWGPP was looking for volunteers, it seemed to fit that an ex Air Dispatcher and a ‘photographer’ could work well together. “Our first efforts at assistance with this project began whilst south of Melbourne in Australia and a 2000 km journey home ahead of us after a golf holiday, would HAVE to pass through a large number of towns that might have cemeteries in need of photography” says Brenda. Contact with Steve and a list of towns Brenda and Kemm were passing through, got the ball rolling. Eleven cemeteries and some 115 names on the list meant we had a job ahead of us but 30 – 40 gravesites later we finally made it home and had uploaded out first sets of images to Steve. “We are both now surprisingly enough, enjoying walking the cemeteries and searching for the mostly easy to find headstones, but often very hard to find headstones! Besides it’s a great way to get some exercise, although walking the golf course is much more preferable!”
Volunteers
The project relies solely on volunteer help. If you believe you can help in any way (photographing, admin, sponsorship, etc) then please contact us. If you would like to help with the photography please download the Guidance and Volunteer policy PDF via link on the volunteers page.