Remembrance Day 2024

As made clear by Giles Enticknap, the British High Commissioner to Botswana, Remembrance Sunday is an opportunity to appreciate those who have served their countries in conflicts around the globe since 1914, remembering those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the Allied and Commonwealth nations, and reflecting on the need for peace in today’s world. 

The High Commissioner’s remarks were followed by a recital by Dan O’Riordan of Flanders Fields. This poem by John McCrae, a doctor and a teacher, which was published in 1915, only a year into the Great War, caught the public’s imagination with its powerful images of battlefields being reclaimed by blood red poppies. After the ‘War to End All Wars’ came to a close in 1918 the poppy became an international symbol of both remembrance and a hope for peace. 

Thabi Letsunyane of the Botswana Veterans League then read the immortal words:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

we will remember them.

A minute's silence was bookended by the haunting bugle sounding of The Last Post and The Reveille. 

Nine year old India Laverick, born in Botswana to British and Polish parents, then read The Kohima Epitaph:

When you go home, tell them of us and say,

for your tomorrow we gave our today.

Wreaths were then laid at the Gaborone War Memorial by the Giles Enticknap, representing the United Kingdom, Thabi Letsunyane on behalf of the Batswana Veterans, India Laverick, representing Northside Primary School and Maru-a-Pula, and Gerald Peinke. 

The service concluded with a reminder that the audience should act collectively towards a peaceful and just world for all - an aim only made possible by the sacrifice of previous generations. 

Within a few years it is likely that the story of the contribution Bechuanaland made to World War II will fade from living memory, making it all the more important for their stories to be told to the next generation. 

For all of the pictures from the Remembrance Sunday Service see - https://www.flickr.com/photos/119086573@N02/albums/72177720321848879/