World leaders attend Belgian war ceremonies

Representatives of 83 countries, including German chancellor Angela Merkel and former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, gathered in Nieuwpoort, West Flanders, yesterday to commemorate the fallen of the First World War. 

King Philippe laid a wreath at the monument to his great-grandfather King Albert I, which now also houses the Westfront war memorial centre. Chancellor Merkel made a speech in which she compared the destruction brought by Germany when it invaded in 1914 with the situation now, when it was possible for her to be invited to such a ceremony. The female choir Scala performed a version of the Pete Seeger song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”

Later in the day the dignitaries gathered in Ypres for a special Last Post ceremony, held as all the other daily ceremonies under the Menin Gate, inscribed with the names of tens of thousands of Commonwealth troops who fell in battle but whose remains were never identified.

Prime minister Charles Michel gave a speech in four languages in which he thanked the representatives for their presence, the king placed another wreath, and the ceremony closed under a rain of poppies, which have become symbolic of First World War remembrance, to the tune of the hymn “O Valiant Hearts”.

“It is difficult for us today to image the struggle, the despair, the trust and the courage felt time after time by those soldiers,” Michel said. “The world of today is completely different in every way from that of 1914. And yet we see some things returning, one of them being the tendency of peoples to revert to misunderstanding and all too often to conflict.”

“We must find a way to bring an end to conflict, in the interests of our children, and of all those who fought and died for their country,” said Canada’s governor-general, David Johnston, who had travelled from Ottawa for the ceremony.

Elsewhere in Ypres, Irish culture minister Heather Humphries visited the In Flanders Fields Museum to reveal the results of a collaboration that succeeded in correcting the records of the 500,000 or so Irish volunteers who fought in the war. The records had hitherto been incomplete or incorrect, with many of the dead reported to have fallen in France when in fact they were fighting on the Western Front in Flanders.

To help sort out remaining anomalies, the Irish government has announced short-term grants for students to work with the museum and Google, which is placing the records online in a searchable database.

Photo: Kanselarij van de Premier/Benoit Doppagne/Belga