Only the sound of birdsong broke the silence as we stood with our heads bowed.
A gentle wind rustled the blossom in the trees on the hillside as a hundred people gathered to remember the sacrifice of the young men of Australia, New Zealand and Canada who fought and died for the freedom of Europe in the First and Second World Wars.
ANZAC day was chosen to mark the anniversary of the landings of Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli in Turkey on 25 April 1915.Last Friday, 99 years later, with my friends and colleagues from the Embassies of Australia and Canada, and the Honorary Consul of New Zealand, I attended the ANZAC day service at the beautiful hillside cemetery of Kviberg in Gothenburg.
We marked the deaths of the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian soldiers in two World Wars and in many other conflicts.
My thoughts were also with those of my fellow countrymen, not least soldiers of the King’s Own Scottish Borders, the regiment with which my brother served in Iraq and in Northern Ireland, also buried at Kviberg.
As we begin to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Great War, as NATO’s troops begin the long withdrawal from the long conflict in Afghanistan and as the situation in Eastern Ukraine remains tense and troubling, it was a good time to remember the importance of the sacrifice made by young servicemen and women around the world.
Also, listening to the eloquent and moving speeches by my friend and colleague, the Australian Ambassador, Gerald Thompson, and by the Counsellor from the Turkish Embassy, it was a moment to reflect on the importance of post-conflict reconciliation.
My Turkish colleague quoted movingly from a speech by Ataturk, who had led the resistance at Gallipoli and who later became of course the father of the Turkish nation.
He spoke of how soldiers on both sides had been fighting for their country and how now they lay together in a new country’s soil.
In many conflicts around the world and in many post-conflict and indeed pre-conflict situations, that spirit of statesmanship, of reconciliation and understanding, is more important now than ever.
