On Wednesday a ceremony in the small Belgian town of Mesen (Messines), presided over by the President, Mrs McAleese, Queen Elizabeth of Britain and Belgium's King Albert, will mark the completion of a dramatic 100-foot round tower memorial to the common endeavours of Irish Protestant and Catholic soldiers who fought there side by side in the first World War.
The tower, clad with stone from the former Mullingar workhouse, sits on the brow of the hill where the road sweeps south from Mesen, commanding vertiginous views. Below, at the bottom of a short, steep hill, is the farm that once housed the headquarters of the Ulster Division.
To the north runs the line of the Messines ridge that cost so many lives. Then the village of Wijshaete, where a graveyard remembers the Irish dead.
The tower was built at a cost of some £100,000, three-quarters of it from the International Fund for Ireland, and was a labour of love of a North-South collaboration between the former Fine Gael TD, Mr Paddy Harte, the Derry loyalist, Mr Glen Barr, and the "Journey of Reconciliation" committee.
It was built by contractors Gilbert Ash, with workers from North and South as well as some 40 young trainees from both FAS and the North's Youth Training Programme.
