Almost a quarter century of Irish peacekeeping in the Lebanon came to a formal end yesterday with a military march through Dublin and a ceremony at the Garden of Remembrance.
Several thousand people lined O'Connell Street in November sunshine for the stand-down parade, in which 1,600 Defence Forces personnel marked the closure of a chapter begun in 1978.
The President, Mrs McAleese, reviewed the marchers as they passed the GPO, accompanied by a display of military vehicles and floats representing different aspects of their work with UNIFIL.
She then led invited guests at a service in the Garden of Remembrance to commemorate the 47 Irish soldiers who died during the 23-year mission. Bereaved family members pinned white roses on a dove-shaped floral tribute, while two pipers played laments. The President, the Taoiseach and the Defence Forces Chief of Staff, Lieut Gen Colm Mangan laid wreaths.
The Chief of Staff opened the ceremony with an Arabic welcome, and tributes included an extract from The Beauty of Death by the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran, read by Cpl Gary Moloney:
"Lament me not, but sing songs of youth and joy; shed not tears upon me, but sing of harvest and the winepress; utter no sigh of agony, but draw upon my face with your finger the symbol of love and joy."
Representatives of the main Christian churches and a former head chaplain of the Defence Forces offered prayers of intercession, while a series of gifts were brought forward, symbolising the Army's work in Lebanon. These included a cross made from shrapnel collected after an incident in the Irish Battalion area, a branch from a Lebanon cedar tree, and a UN medal for peacekeeping.
The roll of honour was recited as a member of each of the bereaved families presented a floral tribute and received a greeting from the Minister for Defence, Mr Smith.
Then a member of the chaplaincy service, Rev Alan Ward read Patrick Kavanagh's poem, Thank You, Thank You, and the ceremony closed with the playing of the Last Post and Reveille, the return of the Tricolour to full mast, and the playing of the National Anthem. There was applause inside and outside the gardens as the ceremony ended.
A civic reception at the Mansion House followed, at which Dublin's Lord Mayor, Cllr Michael Mulcahy, paid tribute to the Defence Forces' peace-keeping role.
Quoting Adlai Stevenson's comment that "making peace is harder than making war", he said it had been too easy to underestimate the dangers faced by the Army in Lebanon. But the facts argued otherwise, especially the statistic that of the 83 personnel who had died on overseas service, more than half died with UNIFIL.
He noted that the Army was not "resting on its laurels" and wished it well on its next, in Eritrea. The 220-strong first Irish contingent of UNMEE was part of yesterday's parade, and leaves for Ethiopia and Eritrea next month
