Dig­ni­taries and on­look­ers on Sun­day flanked hun­dreds of of­fi­cers of the na­tion’s pro­tec­tive ser­vices as they marched and ex­hib­it­ed mu­si­cal dex­ter­i­ty at the top of Fred­er­ick Street for the an­nu­al Memo­r­i­al Day Pa­rade.

At Memo­r­i­al Park in Port-of-Spain, cit­i­zens and for­eign dig­ni­taries paid trib­ute to the fall­en na­tion­als who fought and in some cas­es died for peace in World Wars I and II.

At the pa­rade, mul­ti­ple wreaths were laid at the Ceno­taph at the cen­tre of the park. How­ev­er, while the Pres­i­dent, Prime Min­is­ter and for­eign del­e­gates from the UK, Latin Amer­i­ca and Asia paid their re­spect, some of the armed of­fi­cers en­coun­tered com­pli­ca­tions. Some med­ical as­sis­tants had to rush on­to the field to es­cort of­fi­cers who were un­able to stand for the en­tire­ty of the pa­rade in the blaz­ing sun. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, while many at­ten­dees gath­ered for the memo­r­i­al pa­rade around the Port­land stone and bronze, set on four gran­ite steps, oth­er cit­i­zens ral­lied at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah to for the PNM lo­cal gov­ern­ment gath­er­ing.

Memo­r­i­al Day is ob­served an­nu­al­ly through­out the British Com­mon­wealth as well as in oth­er coun­tries such as France (Armistice Day) and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (Vet­er­ans Day).

At Memo­r­i­al Park, the armed ser­vices fired their weapons in ho­n­our of the those who lost their lives. The front of the Ceno­taph is rep­re­sent­ed by the fig­ure of a sol­dier armed with a ri­fle, stand­ing guard and de­fend­ing a dy­ing com­rade who lies on the ground at his feet.

The cer­e­mo­ny, which ho­n­ours troops who served in the British West In­di­an Reg­i­ment, was at­tend­ed by Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and mem­bers of the diplo­mat­ic corps.

At the wreath-lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Memo­r­i­al Park Ceno­taph, on­ly one vet­er­an was present. GML un­der­stand that the oth­ers met at a lun­cheon in Barataria af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny.

Al­so present at the pa­rade was the High Com­mis­sion­er to the Unit­ed King­dom of Great Britain and North­ern Ire­land along­side rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Chi­na, the Eu­ro­pean Union, Spain, Pe­ru, Brazil, Venezuela, France and oth­er coun­tries.

While the May­or of Port-of-Spain, Joel Mar­tinez was al­so present at the cer­e­mo­ny.