Annwyl Monsieur Sarkozy
That you kept a British dignitary waiting at the ceremony at Verdun commemorating the 1918 Armistice is of no particular concern to me. No doubt, when ‘the guns fell silent’ at precisely 11am on the 11th November 1918, a number of units over the whole prodigious length of the Western Front continued firing until the message got through. Delays and misunderstandings happen. No doubt also the various aides-de-camp suffered a nail-biting ten minutes while your staff struggled to get you to the church on time. In any event, you did what you were supposed to do, inspected the gleaming lines of ceremonial troops on parade accompanied by your charming wife, laid your wreath and generally behaved in the dignified manner befitting the Head of State of one of the proudest and finest nations of the Western world. The delay didn’t really count for much.
What does concern me, however, and I speak as a Welshman and a proud member of a small but by no means insignificant European nation, is that whether by design, lapse of protocol, temporary loss of memory brought on by the panic of your tardy arrival, poor advice or inadequate briefing – or a combination of all or some of these – you chose to ignore the contribution paid by the sons and daughters of Wales to the defence not only of the Free World, but of your own dear country, in two successive World Wars. “France”, you said, “will never forget the English, Scottish and Irish soldiers who fought on our soil as if it was their own.” You did not mention the Welsh. And yet they too, died in their thousands upon thousands for your soil ‘as if it was their own’. Continue reading »
