Memorial Grove for Afghanistan Soldiers: The Weight of Remembrance

The Afghanistan mission ended more than a year ago. Defense Minister Lambrecht has now unveiled a memorial grove to commemorate the dead soldiers in the presence of around 40 survivors.

The boulder from the Afghan Marmal Mountains, which is now in Germany near Potsdam, weighs a whopping twenty-seven tons. But the emotional weight, the meaning of the memorial stone for the bereaved, cannot be measured in kilograms.

“For me it’s just important that he wasn’t left there alone, that he’s here, has found a safe and good location. And we can go there at any time,” is how Tanja Menz puts her feelings into words. Their son Konstantin was killed in action in 2011. When an assassin disguised as an Afghan soldier opened fire on the Germans in the Bundeswehr camp “OP North”.

59 soldiers died in the Afghanistan operation

Konstantin Menz is one of 59 soldiers who did not return alive from the Bundeswehr’s most dangerous mission to date. “We came together today at the Bundeswehr’s most emotional place, the ‘Forest of Remembrance’,” with these words Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht introduced her speech at the inauguration of the memorial grove. That memorial grove where the soldiers commemorated their fallen comrades during their deployment in what was once Germany’s largest camp, Mazar-i-Sharif. And that also includes the huge boulder that the Bundeswehr had transported from the Hindu Kush to the central memorial, to the “Forest of Remembrance”, by Antonov transport plane and low-loader.

“The transfer back from Afghanistan symbolically ends today at the grove of honor,” said Lambrecht. “What does not end is the processing of the mission.” We owe it to the deceased and their families to learn the right military and political lessons.

Committee of Inquiry has begun

A Bundestag investigative committee and an inquiry commission have only just begun to process the almost 20-year deployment. You have to learn lessons, says Tanja Menz. A loud one: Going into an operation with a clear strategy and also with a strategy on how to end it.

She doesn’t think at all that her son Konstantin lost his life in vain, that the mission was pointless, as has often been written. People had had the opportunity to learn to read and write and go to school for 20 years. That makes sense. “It makes a difference. When these young women raise the next generation, they do it differently than they would have done before,” emphasizes Menz.

The boulder, the grove of honor and the plaque with the name of her fallen son on it enable Tanja Menz to be closer to her son than before. For her it is a place of sorrow and comfort rolled into one.

Lambrecht: “Remembrance is a social task”

Minister Lambrecht sees the commemoration of those who died as a “social task”: “It is important for the troops to know that the deceased and those who died and their families will never be forgotten.” The “Forest of Remembrance” is a public place. Theoretically, everyone can commemorate the soldiers who did not return home alive from their missions.

In this respect, the 27-ton boulder also embodies the attempt to bring the troops and society a little closer together. Lambrecht recommends at least all members of the Bundestag to visit the “Forest of Remembrance” at least once. After all, they are the ones who ultimately decide whether German soldiers are sent on missions abroad.