John Culatto
GIBRALTAR’S Chief Minister Fabian Picardo described Remembrance Sunday as ‘moving’ as he lined up with local community leaders to pay homage to the war dead.
Picardo quoted Laurence Binyon on an X social media post ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.’
He met with military veterans and their relatives from Gibraltar gathered at the British and American War Memorial for the annual Remembrance Sunday ceremony on Line Wall Road.
The Ceremony of Remembrance included an interdenominational service and a reading of the Bidding from the Governor Sir David Steel.
A soldier fired a saluting gun and a military band played the Last Post that marked a two minute silence.
A band then played the Reveille and dignitaries laid wreaths at the foot of the war statue.
The governor Sir David Steel was paid tribute to the war dead with an X post that added, ‘Lest we forget’.
Flanders memorial
On the other side of Europe on a wet, autumn day the director of Gibraltar House in Brussels Daniel D’Amato laid a wreath at a Cross of Sacrifice at a Royal Legion event.
He had travelled to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in Heverlee, Belgium, part of the Flanders region, where nearly 1,000 casualties from both world wars are buried.
The Act of Remembrance represented Gibraltar with representatives from the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Poland, New Zealand, South Africa, US and Belgium itself.
Canadian army doctor John McCrae wrote the poem ‘In Flanders Field’ that pictured the hardened poppies, considered a weed in the area, growing among the war dead.
It followed the Second Battle of Ypres where the Germans used chlorine gas to kill around 87,000 Allied soldiers.
Punch magazine published it and forever immortalised the poppy as a symbol of the war dead.
“It was a privilege to lay down a wreath on behalf of the people of Gibraltar at this poignant ceremony, during which the world came together to commemorate and remember the sacrifice of so many,” D’Amato said.
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