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British Battle of Jutland victim honoured 100 years later

Royal Navy Able Seaman Harry Gasson was properly laid to rest in Esbjerg on Tuesday, a full century after being killed in the Battle of Jutland, the biggest naval battle of the First World War.

Published: 1 June 2016 09:18 CEST
British Battle of Jutland victim honoured 100 years later
AB Gasson's service was attended by relatives (L) and sailors from HMS Tyne (R). Photo: Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Gasson’s body was recovered on the Danish coast near Esbjerg in September that year and buried at Esbjerg New Cemetery with the grave inscription ‘A British Seaman of the Great War’.
 
After being properly identified by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), AB Gasson was finally given an honourable resting place on Tuesday. The sailor’s grave was re-dedicated with a new headstone that now bears his name at Esbjerg New Cemetery. 
 
 
AB Gasson’s descendants Barbara Pritchard and Niece Michelle Enrof, both from Toronto, Canada, and his cousin once removed, Maggie Compton from Ludlow in Shropshire, attended Tuesday’s rededication ceremony. 
 
“It was a very emotional day and we are so happy that Harry finally has a named grave. We are extremely grateful to everyone that has worked so hard to make this happen,” Maggie Compton said in a statement provided to The Local. 
 
Also present were representatives from Britain’s Joint Casualty & Compassionate Centre and the CWGC, the UK's Ambassador to Denmark, Vivien Life. 
 
“I am honoured to be in Jutland to mark such a historic day with such a moving ceremony. This was a very personal story of one sailor who gave his life, but which represents the many who were lost one hundred years ago,” Commodore Ian Bisson of the Royal Navy said. 
 
A memorial sculpture park for the victims of the Battle of Jutland is due to open in the northern Jutland town of Thyborøn later this month. 
 
More than 6,000 British and 2,500 German sailors were killed in the 36-hour battle, which began off the Danish coast on May 31, 1916. More than 100,000 sailors were engaged in 250 ships.

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TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

Published: 16 May 2023 08:29 CEST
France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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