I woke to the dazzling early light of the
tropical coastline and looked down on to the Aberdeen peninsula.
The Royal Navy had arrived. Five ships were lying at anchor dotted
across the bay. More than 500,000 west African troops took part in
the first and second world wars and a Remembrance Day service was
to be held at the Freetown military cemetery by the sea.
About 250 of us stood among the haphazardly
laid-out gravestones. British and Sierra Leone military stood to
attention in the front rows. We civilians stood behind them.
Elderly Muslim veterans dressed in white and gold robes sat or
stood beside the memorial to comrades in arms. British snipers
guarded us from the top of nearby giant storage tanks. British
soldiers in camouflage gear with guns at the ready surveyed the
sea. A Sierra Leone military band seated beneath the only
shade-tree played Remembrance Day hymns.
Because Freetown is in exactly the same
time zone as the UK, at that very moment at the Cenotaph in
Whitehall and in churches and at war memorials across the United
Kingdom people were choking back tears to just the same music. The
helicopter-carrier HMS Ocean, anchored out in the bay, fired a gun
to mark the two minutes' silence.
When a handful of young kids paddled up in
their canoes the soldiers became extra alert. They had reason to
be cautious. The Revolutionary United Front rebels control
thousands of cocaine-addicted, scrambled-brained child soldiers.
For seven years, the RUF tactic has been to raid a village and
round up boys and girls aged 10 and upwards.