The gravestones of the Irish soldiers who died here on UN peacekeeping duty have been packed up and are being transported back to Ireland for re-erection in the Garden of Remembrance at Arbour Hill.
The stones bearing the names of the 46 soldiers who died in action or in accidents while in south Lebanon, or who died at home from injury or illness sustained here, will be accompanied by a permanent memorial in the Irish Battalion's Headquarters in Tibnin.
Tomorrow morning the gates of Camp Shamrock will be closed for the last time by Cmdt John O'Brien, who as a young officer served with the first Irish Battalion to be sent to Lebanon in June 1978. The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, and the Chief of Staff, Lieut Gen Colm Mangan, will officiate at the closing ceremony and dedication of the memorial.
Yesterday, Lieut Gen Mangan said Irish troops were leaving south Lebanon with a sense of happiness about the successful outcome of their mission and the contribution they had made to the local population, and a sense of sadness at their lost colleagues. The brief ceremony at 7.30 local time (5.30 a.m. GMT) will, he said, be a very emotional occasion at Camp Shamrock.
He said: "We have paid a very high price but that pain has not been in vain. The people of south Lebanon are very grateful for the huge sacrifices that the Irish have made.
"We have always treated this as a very serious mission and have endeavoured to secure the lives of the people when there was anything but peace. We provided security for people left in areas that were almost emptied of their populations. We provided confidence enough for people to return to their areas. We showed they could trust us and have confidence in the United Nations."
Lieut Gen Mangan said the search to discover what happened to Private Kevin Joyce, the young Aran Islands soldier who was kidnapped and murdered by the PLO in 1981, and whose body was never recovered, would continue after the departure of the Irish Battalion.
"It is a very sad case for us but so it was for each and every one of those who were lost in Lebanon. In that (Private Joyce's) case there was no body to mourn and that makes it particularly poignant.
"I have served in two battalions and was very conscious that there was a tremendous effort made by each battalion to pursue the case and we have never let up in our efforts and we won't."
The battalion commander, Lieut Col Gerry Hegarty, who hands over control of the Irish area of operations to a Ghanaian UN Battalion tomorrow, said tomorrow's ceremony would be marked by pride and sadness by his troops.
Last year the Irish troops decided to mark their 23 years of service in south Lebanon, during a period when an estimated 150,000 people died in the country's civil war and invasion by Israel, by endorsing a charity scheme to help the poor farmers of the area.
The memorial charity they chose is the Irish livestock charity, B≤thar. Two B≤thar workers, Peter Ireton and David Moloney, have begun work on the scheme and two weeks ago brought a shipment of Irish dairy goats, 45 females and five males. The goats are being prepared at a farming station near Tyre for distribution to local peasant farmers in conjunction with two Lebanese rural relief charities.
One is paid for by Dr Youssef El-Khalid, the senior director of the Lebanese Central Bank, and the other, Jihad al Binaa, is the rural relief scheme operated by the Hizbullah Party.
Yesterday, Dr El-Khalid said: "It is a great project and the Irish Army have initiated it in south Lebanon. It is not the first time that the Irish Army have shown such generosity."