Earlier in October the 43rd and 44th of our 45 personal remembrance services were conducted in Gaza, Egypt.

The UK Government’s travel advice strongly advises members of the public not to enter Gaza due to longstanding security concerns in this region and this has been compounded by the recent emotive move of the US embassy. The Israeli authorities also frequently close the border making entry very problematic.

This therefore made our mission of bringing ‘home’ to our men who did not make it ‘home’ from the 2nd battle of Gaza – John Bailey and Ivo Smalls a real challenge.

We are pleased to report that our military, guarding our Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel on hearing our objective and plight did what our military do and went ‘in’ where we could not, on our behalf.

They stood over the graves of John and Ivo held two minutes silence and said prayers and recounted their life stories, using information we provided. Our wreaths of West Norfolk Lavender were laid, wrapped in the Snettisham Torc along with letters from the community and Snettisham Primary School pupils.

As you can see from the photograph of Ivo Smalls headstone – conflict still occurs in the immediate vicinity. This shrapnel damage was caused in 2014 when Hamas launched rockets in to Israel from a nearby copse causing Israel to retaliate with bombardment of their own damaging several graves. The Israeli’s have formally offered their apologies and agreed to pay the CWGC’s costs to replace the headstones and this activity is in train.