Saddest Place You Have Visited?

[Uncle Buck]

Hiroshima was errie. The Peace Museum was very balanced until the last walk way on the way out. Also they mention the birds never sing in the city and when you leave the museum it seems that way

 

[m20gull]

Coniston Water - on a cool winter's morning under a grey heavy sky. Right down at the water's edge and trying to imagine what drove Campbell to ride across it at 300 mph. Felt sad for a man of whom so much was expected, who delivered so much, yet ultimately paid the price for his nation's vanity. The emotion was so strong I can still picture the scene.

 

[User removed 4]

Oradour was very moving, especially the cemetery where the French certainly do not mince their words on that they thought of the Nazis

Well the ones that didnt collaborate anyway.

 

[ifuhatepalacestandup]

Auschwitz but I have been to that place in France too.

this

 

[wunt be druv]

Newhaven

Many a true word spoken in jest,seeing the small memorial with the British,Canadian,French and Merchant navy flags always strikes a sad note when driving past.Total waste of many young mens lives.It may not rank along side some of the shockingly sad places mentioned but each soldier/sailor who died was somebody's son.

 

[Bwian]

Vimy Ridge-the Canadian Memorial. Unbelievable numbers of men killed and the place is eerily quiet-no birds singing regardless of time of year and the craters everywhere make you understand what the phrase 'Hell on Earth' was invented for.

Also agree with Kanchanaburi. The conditions endured by P.O.W's to build that railway must have been intolerable.

 

[bn1&bn3 Albion]

Not been to any key sites but any war memorial is really sad especially when you start reading how old those who died were..

 

[wunt be druv]

Not been to any key sites but any war memorial is really sad especially when you start reading how old those who died were..

Amen to that,mate.

 

[StonehamPark]

Not been to any key sites but any war memorial is really sad especially when you start reading how old those who died were..

Well said.

 

[forrest]

Many a true word spoken in jest,seeing the small memorial with the British,Canadian,French and Merchant navy flags always strikes a sad note when driving past.Total waste of many young mens lives.It may not rank along side some of the shockingly sad places mentioned but each soldier/sailor who died was somebody's son.

The Dieppe raid was indeed a sad day with a heavy loss of life. However the British and Candian's learnt many a lesson from that day which they used a few years later on D-Day.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

Birkenau

 

[Alex Alex Dawson oo! oo!]

One more for Aberfan, although I've always found Derry pretty sad.

".................To those we love and miss so very much."

 

[mune ni kamome]

Many a true word spoken in jest,seeing the small memorial with the British,Canadian,French and Merchant navy flags always strikes a sad note when driving past.Total waste of many young mens lives.It may not rank along side some of the shockingly sad places mentioned but each soldier/sailor who died was somebody's son.

Couldn't think where that memorial was for a while but I've just remembered. Just below the Seahaven pool. Yes quite thought provoking especially around poppy day time.

 

[TheJasperCo]

Went on a school trip with other people in my history class to visit some of the many WWI memorial sites in Belgium and northern France, monuments, cemeteries and the like. Just, wow, nothing comes close. So powerful - the most memorable school trip I've been on, if only referring to how vivid and poignant the images in the museums were. They will stick with me for some time yet.

 

[Lankyseagull]

Playing golf overlooking Omaha Beach, cursing as my ball disappeared off course and into a deep ravine, then realising as I stood down there that the ravine had been caused by an explosion and people had lost their lives there years earlier. Put me in a completely different frame of mind for the rest of the round!

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

Been to Oradour sur Glanne - agree it is enormously moving.

In the british military Cemetery in Arras northern France, there is a memorial which carries the names of all the allied soldiers who were "missing presumed dead" in the first world war - some 40,000 names from memory, not that i counted them. Horrible when you think of all the families who never discovered what happened to their loved ones.

 

[Alex Alex Dawson oo! oo!]

Been to Oradour sur Glanne - agree it is enormously moving.

In the british military Cemetery in Arras northern France, there is a memorial which carries the names of all the allied soldiers who were "missing presumed dead" in the first world war - some 40,000 names from memory, not that i counted them. Horrible when you think of all the families who never discovered what happened to their loved ones.

I think you may inadvertantly be understating here, there were something like 90,000 missing allied soldiers just at Ypres.

 

[Digweeds Trousers]

Culloden. Stood there one autumn evening and stared out across the battlefield. When you understand how hopeless the Jacobite effort was against a well-drilled Royal army including mostly lowland Scots it is very sad. Most moving though is the walk back to Inverness where thousands of people were massacred in the Pacification of the Highlands. A desperate tragic story and the place captures that mood so well even today.

 

[daveinprague]

Beaumont Hamel due to 1st WW interest.

 

[KLF]

The war museum in Ho Chi Minh was very sad - especially the images of the deformities caused by the weapons the Yanks used, but it has to be Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and Choeung Ek Killing Fields with the skull filled stupour in Cambodia for me. More so because it was within my lifetime - I remember it being reported - that it home all the more. To think we may well find this and more when North Korea opens up is a chilling thought indeed.