Kenya honours fallen soldiers
Mr Osman Ali, a 74-year-old a retired Kenya Defence Forces soldier, with Major Jamie Hayward chat after paying their respects to fallen solders at the Commonwealth War Cemetery, Ngong Road, Nairobi, during Remembrance Day on Saturday. PHOTO | KANYIRI WAHITO | NATION
The military and their families and friends yesterday gathered at the Commonwealth War Cemetery on Ngong Road, Nairobi, to pay tribute to soldiers who did in the line of duty.
Chief of Defence Forces, General Samson Mwathethe, represented by the Eastern Command boss Major-General Benjamin Biwott, led the occasion also attended by the US Ambassador Robert Godec and British High Commissioner Nic Hailey.
Bearing red poppies, serving and retired soldiers and their families laid wreaths and prayed and sang to commemorate Remembrance Day, observed in the Commonwealth on November 11 since the end of the First World War.
The day is to remember the end of hostilities of WWI, which formally ended “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” in 1918 when the armistice were signed by representatives of Germany and the Entente between 5:12 and 5:20 that morning.
The day is commemorated under different names. It is Armistice Day in France and Belgium and Veterans Day in the United States.
Kenyan veterans who served in the Second World War between 1939 and 1945 on Sunday lamented that they had been neglected by the British and Kenyan governments.
“Despite our participation in the war, I have nothing to show for it,” said Mr Eusebio M’Baikunywa Mbiuki, 101, from Tharaka-Nithi County, who fought in Burma.
Mr Osman Ali, 74, a Kenya Defence Forces retired sergeant, said he had travelled from Isiolo County because he has to pay tribute to all the soldiers who fell in battle.
