Irish history is made in the strangest places. Last April it was in the scruffy Civil Service offices of Castle Buildings in east Belfast. Yesterday the stage moved to the Belgian village of Mesen (Messines in French), where for the first time the Irish State formally honoured the quarter of a million largely forgotten Irish people who served - and the 50,000 who died - in the British forces during the first World War.
The monument was fitting, a 110 ft Irish round tower made from 400 tonnes of stones taken from the former Mullingar workhouse. The inauguration party could not have been more prestigious: the President, Mrs McAleese, did the unveiling, watched by Queen Elizabeth and the king and queen of Belgium.
On a low ridge, Mesen totally dominated the damp, green Flanders fields around it in yesterday's bright November sunshine. The mayor, Mr Liefooghe, said it was not hard to see why in June 1917 it had been such a strategic location for the Germans to hold and for the British army - largely made up of the 16th Irish division and the 36th Ulster division on this front - to attack and overrun.
By the horrendous standards of the Great War, relatively few Irish died in that attack, but more than 16,000 Germans were killed or reported missing. It was little wonder that Mr Liefooghe expressed the hope that the new monument would make visitors reflect on the "the stupidity of violence and war".
As far as conflict between the Irish was concerned, there was already some evidence of that reflection. In the village square the pipers of the band of the Royal Irish Regiment, once the Ulster Defence Regiment so detested by nationalists, swapped tunes with the Army Number One band with which it had merged for the occasion.
The Ulstermen responded to orders of "Fir, seasaigi ar ais" ("Men - stand at ease"). The streets along which they marched were decorated with clusters of intermingled Irish and Belgian tricolours and Union flags.
Former RIR Col Harvey Bicker, now a Co Down unionist councillor, is also a friend of Mrs McAleese. "This is a personal pilgrimage for her," he said yesterday. "She feels very strongly about the need to find some coming together of the histories of the peoples of North and South." Both her own people, the Leneghans, and her husband's, the McAleeses, lost young men in the Great War.
EU Commissioner Mr Padraig Flynn, a Mayo Fianna Failer of staunch republican stock, had earlier in the week been to visit Menin Gate in nearby Ypres, which bears the names of many thousands of men lost in action whose bodies were never found. He found it "moving and emotional" to see a number of Flynns among them.
Mr David Sayer, the Northern construction engineer who saw the project through to completion, felt the round tower was a "most appropriate symbol that transcends Ireland's present divisions and problems. It is slender and looks fragile but is anything but - it gives a wonderful sense of stability and continuity."
The best speech on this day of few speeches came from the former loyalist leader Mr Glen Barr, who with former Donegal TD Mr Paddy Harte, founded the Journey of Reconciliation Trust which built the Mesen tower.
He asked people to think of the young work trainees from North and South who had helped to build it as a force for reconciliation, and hoped that "never again would any young person on the island of Ireland have to die for Ireland".
"This little poppy offers no offence to anyone, yet we have made it a symbol of division back in Ireland." He asked "Catholic Ireland" to wear it in future "in order that the spirits of these young heroes which have haunted this battlefield for more than 80 years can finally be laid to rest."