Portugal’s Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, today paid tribute to Portuguese soldiers killed in France in WWI.
The Portuguese prime minister saw locations where Portuguese soldiers had fought and then visited the cemetery where many who died in the 1918 Battle of La Lys (Batalha de La Lys) later were buried.
The European Union marked the events of 100 year ago in Ypres, Belgium but the Portuguese Prime Minister first visited the Portuguese Military Cemetery at Richebourg, in northern France, and the monument to the fallen in nearby La Couture, where the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps fought in 1918 at the Battle of La Lys.
In a short speech at the cemetery, the Prime Minister spoke of the "respect and feeling of enormous pride" of the entire country "for all those who were sacrificed in the service of the nation."
The PM visited the places where the Portuguese had fought as part of the British Expeditionary Force, and then joined members of the European Council in Ypres to mark the centenary of the outbreak of WWI on June 28th, 1914.
Portugal’s League of Combatants wants to replace the weathered Portuguese military cemetery tombstones at Richebourg by 2018, also those of Portuguese soldiers buried in Boulogne-sur-Mer, in northwest France, but the project involves "significant costs."
Passos Coelho spoke of the importance of the European Union as a way to prevent the recurrence of such tragic events. "It is our duty to ensure that tragedies like these in the twentieth century never happen again.”
By the armistice in 1918, the Portuguese Expeditionary Force had lost 2,160 dead, 5,224 wounded and 6,678 prisoners – 14,000 casualties out of an establishment of 60,000.
See:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Lys_%281918%29
also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Expeditionary_Corps
