Anglo-American Cemetery Beirut, Lebanon: November 2013

Remembrance Day in Beirut

On 9 November 2013, Remembrance Day was commemorated at the Anglo-American Cemetery.

Members of the committee participated in the worship service, lead by our Rev. Nabil Shehadi, at the British Beirut War Cemetery. At this service, poems were read by ambassadors and dignitaries, honoring those who served in the Armed Forces, followed by the laying of a wreath. In the audience were veterans of war currently living in Lebanon, their families and other honored guests. The event was reported in the Daily Star and NOWLebanon.

One of the poems that was read was “The Last to Leave” by Leon Gellert

The guns were silent, and the silent hills

had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze

I gazed upon the vales and on the rills,

And whispered, "What of these?” and "What of these?”

These long forgotten dead with sunken graves,

Some crossless, with unwritten memories

Their only mourners are the moaning waves,

Their only minstrels are the singing trees

And thus I mused and sorrowed wistfully

I watched the place where they had scaled the height,

The height whereon they bled so bitterly

Throughout each day and through each blistered night

I sat there long, and listened - all things listened too

I heard the epics of a thousand trees,

A thousand waves I heard; and then I knew

The waves were very old, the trees were wise:

The dead would be remembered evermore-

The valiant dead that gazed upon the skies,

And slept in great battalions by the shore.

AACC members at Beirut War Graves Cemetery


AACC members at the Anglo-American Cemetery

Wreath of Poppies at Urquhart-Pullen grave

Additional photographs of the main event can be found on the UK embassy's facebook page.

Following the main service, a small memorial was held at the Anglo-American Cemetery. A wreath of poppies, donated by the UK Embassy, was laid upon the grave of Geoffery Urquhart-Pullen, the single Commonwealth Grave at the Anglo-American Cemetery. Urqhurt-Pullen was an RAF flight navigator who was killed during the 1956 Suez Crisis.