“We will remember” - Luxembourg honours British WWII dead

(CS) Members of the Royal Air Forces Association gathered in Luxembourg this weekend to remember British and Commonwealth aircraftmen who died in the Grand Duchy during the Second World War.

On Friday morning, Grand Duke Henri received British Ambassador to Luxembourg Alice Walpole, as well as several members of the Royal Air Forces Association. Luxembourg's head of state is the patron of the Luxembourg branch of the organisation.

Later that day, the ambassador held a reception at her Luxembourg residence, where she gifted an original shell casing to the military museum in Diekirch. Last year, Ms Walpole had given the museum an original RAF uniform for its collection.

On Saturday morning, Luxembourg City mayor Xavier Bettel joined a wreath-laying ceremony at the cemetery in Hollerich, where six members of the Royal Air Force are buried, including the crew of a Stirling bomber of the N°7 Bomb Squadron, who were all killed on April 11, 1943, when their plane crashed near Koerich after being hit by German flak.

Members of the Royal Air Forces Association from the UK and other European branches had travelled to Luxembourg for the ceremony together with active members of the Royal Air Force. They were joined by local officials, including Director of Defence Conrad Bruch, Commander of the Luxembourg army General Mario Daubenfeld and Deputy Director of the Police Grand-Ducale Leon Lundovicy.

The group then made their way to the “Marscherwald” where a Royal Air Force plane was gunned down in August 1943. While three members of the crew were killed, four survived. Only one member of crew was captured by German forces, while the other were kept hidden by the local population and were eventually able to return to Britain.

At the site of the plane crash a new memorial plaque was unveiled on Saturday.

The commemoration then continued in the nearby town Bech, where words of remembrance for the Luxembourg fallen were spoken and wreaths were laid at the “Monument aux Morts”.