Yesterday I attended the Remembrance Sunday annual service at Solymar’s Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery. The weather was beautiful: mild and sunny. The dark-red poppies, for many decades the symbol of this occasion, stood out boldly against a clear, blue sky.
This year’s ceremony was special for many reasons. Most importantly – besides the diplomatic representatives of Australia, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and some 100 other participants – His Excellency Csaba Hende, the Hungarian Minister of Defence kindly joined us to salute the memory of those soldiers who lost their lives in the First World War and in subsequent wars.
The service was led for the first time by The Reverend Frank Hegedus, the relatively newly-appointed Priest-in-Charge of the Anglican Church of St Margaret of Scotland in Budapest. (His predecessor, Canon Denis Moss, was officiating in parallel at a newly instituted, smaller Remembrance service at Lake Balaton.) As in previous years, clerics from the Scottish Mission, Polish Catholic and Jewish Churches participated in this ecumenical and multi-lingual event.
This was my 7th and last Remembrance service in Hungary as I leave Post in a few weeks’ time. But I am sure this moving tradition will continue and that my colleagues at the Embassy will be organizing the service on every Sunday nearest to the 11th November for many years to come. From the comments of those who joined me for something warming at the British Residence afterwards, it is much appreciated.