Nations Unite in Anglican Remembrance Services Across Europe

It was standing room only at St George's Madrid (Spain) for the annual Remembrance Day service on Sunday, at which representatives of India and Bangladesh, Cyprus and Greece sat alongside each other together with ambassadors from most of the commonwealth countries, their military attaches and staff of the local NATO headquarters.

And in Naples (Italy), this year saw the first international remembrance service instead of a purely British one. Christ Church Naples is the garrison church for British forces in the southern Europe NATO base which also houses service personnel from 19 countries. Most were represented in what the chaplain, Revd Murray Grant, described as "a moving and significant united demonstration of reconciliation".

A day after the elections in Turkey, representatives of over 20 different countries attended a remembrance service at St Nicholas Church in Ankara, in the grounds of the British Embassy. The ambassadors of USA, South Africa and India all read lessons.

At Fuengirola on the Spanish Costa del Sol veterans hired the Salon Varietes Theatre for their remembrance service which was addressed by the chaplain of St Andrew's Los Boliches, with an overflow service of morning prayers being held at St Andrew's itself for another 70 people, led by a Reader.

In northern Europe, acts of commemoration were held at two war grave sites in Norway, both attended by commonwealth military personnel from the NATO northern HQ at Stavanger and strongly supported by the Norwegian community. Almost 1000 British and commonwealth personnel are buried at 74 sites throughout the country.

An ecumenical service was held at the British War Graves cemetery at Solmar, outside Budapest (Hungary), a country which was an "enemy" of the allies in the second world war but which in 1947 donated land as a perpetual resting place for 210 allied personnel. Besides the Anglican chaplain canon Denis Moss, a Presbyterian minister, a Polish Roman Catholic Priest took part, and a Jewish cantor sang a prayer in honour of the Jewish airmen among the RAF personnel.

And in St George's Church Berlin, veteran peace campaigner Canon Paul Oesterreicher talked during a remembrance service of his experience as a Jewish child growing up in Nazi Berlin before his family emigrated to New Zealand. Before the service, inter faith prayers were said at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery from Jewish, Moslem Hindu and Sikh traditions.

On Monday 11 November a group from St George's was due to lay wreaths at the Sachsenhausen and Ravensbruck concentration camp sites