SENAFE, Eritrea - In a tiny, ramshackle graveyard, tucked behind an African hospital in ruins, lies the grave of a great Canadian hero.
In 1856, Alexander Robert Dunn was the first Canadian to earn a Victoria Cross. This past weekend troops on a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea cleaned up the decrepit site.
"It was really gross" said Lt. Earl Maher, who sent 13 troops to do the job.
"The graveyard wasn't looked after at all."
The soldiers removed goat skulls, bones and excrement. "I think the locals must have used it as an animal pen until the wall [around the graveyard] fell down."
The soldiers, all engineers from CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick, spent an entire day at the site. Twenty-five wheelbarrows full of garbage and debris were cleared away.
The stone wall that encompasses the handful of graves in the yard is fixed, the wrought iron gate freshly painted and the cross that had broken off Dunn's tombstone once again in place.
"It was a mark of respect for someone who won the Victoria Cross," said Maher, a Queen's University grad.
Dunn earned the Victoria Cross as a 21-year-old lieutenant in the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War.
On Oct. 25, 1854, Dunn led his troops in attack after attack until the Russians withdrew. One one occasion, he noticed that the Russians were about to kill a sergeant, Robert Bentley, who was struggling with his horse which had been badly injured.
Fighting off the Russian attackers and putting Bentley on his own horse, Dunn saved Bentley's life.
Two years later he was given the most coveted and esteemed military award for Britain and the Commonwealth.
The abandoned gravesite was discovered around Christmas by Maj. Steve Beattie, a British Exchange officer based at CFB Kingston who was helping the UN peacekeeping mission.
A bit of a history buff, Beattie knew when he saw the grave that Dunn was an important figure. His research subsequently proved him right.
The chief of defence staff, the minister of national defence and the deputy chief of defence all recently visited the site.
"Ottawa is involved and they're interested in possibly exhuming the body and repatriating it back to Canada," Maher said.
For the time being Dunn can rest in peace in the small town of Senafe, in the temporary security zone being established between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The 234 Canadian troops here were so inspired by the discovery they have named their camp in Dunn's honour.
"It's just such a coincidence," Maher said. "You never expect to find something like that. I'd never heard of Eritrea before this operation. I knew about Ethiopia, but I didn't even know Eritrea existed.
"We come here and smack down in the middle of the two countries is a Canadian.
"Everyone automatically thought, '[The state of his grave] has got to be fixed.' It's just something you do for a fellow soldier."
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