November 11th - a time for reflection

Good riddance to the Berlin Wall say Ugis and Gary

Many of us who are of a certain age have strong personal memories of the cold war, a time when Europe and the world was split along ideological lines, and the fear of war was never far away. I remember my own excitement, working on Phantom jets in the RAF, when aircraft were scrambled to intercept Soviet aircraft over the North Sea - an almost daily occurence during my service in the 1980s. As the European Parliament commemorates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, another old soldier has his own poignant memories of that era.

Ugis Londers, a Latvian from Riga, was conscripted into the Soviet army in 1987, and was serving with an armoured engineering unit in East Germany on the very day that the wall came down. He describes a nervous period, when small groups of dissidents in his own country and across Eastern Europe became stronger and more vocal, and troop redeployments suggested that change was in the air. For a young soldier, however, these events were best not discussed openly: troops from the Baltic states were always uncertain of their position within the Soviet military structures, and the relationship was often problematic.

"When the wall came down" he says, "there was a sense of freedom. We just wanted to get on with our lives... I never wanted to be a Soviet soldier".

Today he is known by many parliamentarians, eurocrats, and journalist, as the face of O'Farrells, the bar in Place du Luxembourg that is the preferred watering hole of so many.

It was a pleasure to stroll with him around the mock-up of the wall, and the Allied checkpoint that has sprung up outside the parliament, particularly on this day, November 11th - Armistice Day. Latvians have another reason to mark this day of course, on November 11th 1919 they won a decisive battle against the German-backed Russian forces of Pavel Bermont-Avalov at Riga, thus paving the way for the foundation of their state in 1920.

One thing we both agreed on, is that whilst this day may be one for reflection, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall does not mean that politicians should allow themselves to become complacent. As Winston Churchill famously remarked, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance..."