Hundreds of people are expected to attend a memorial service for Gold Coast man Reece Harding who was killed on a Syrian battlefield 12 months ago.
He died after stepping on a landmine while fighting for the Kurdish militia against Islamic State.
His parents, Keith and Michele Harding, have arranged a remembrance ceremony at the Somerville Chapel, Nerang on Sunday from 1pm to remember their son, who died aged 23.
Reece Harding's parents originally thought he had gone to Fiji for a break before federal authorities came knocking at their Gold Coast home to tell them he was in Iraq preparing to cross the Syrian border to join the fight against Islamic State.
Despite his mother's desperate appeals to come home, he stayed and at the end of the sixth week - during a night mission to clear a village of explosives and booby-traps planted by IS fighters - Reece Harding stepped on a land mine.
"The next time we saw him was to identify his body," his father Keith tells AAP, almost a year to the day since his son was killed.
It was only with the help of the Kurdish community their son fought with that the Hardings were able to bury him.
The community drew on friends in high places to get his body out of Syria to be buried in a cemetery not far from his parent's home.
Since their son died, the Hardings have been adopted by the Kurdish community.
They feel they owe it to their son to draw attention to the plight of the Kurdish people that affected him so powerfully that he went to join their fight to drive IS terrorists out of their homeland.
"It was important to Reece. You don't want him to die in vain," Michelle Harding says.
Share
