37 mins
’Earthed and realistic’
COVER
AS luck, providence or simple mathematics would have it, November 11 2018 falls on a Sunday.
Uniforms will be donned, wreaths laid, silences observed and the National Anthem sung at churches and memorials in every town and village in the land, as has happened since it became customary to mark Remembrance Sunday (rather than Armistice Day itself) after the Second World War.
But this year the ceremonies will then move on to something different, as the emphasis shifts from the Remembrance of all the fallen of the 20th and 21st centuries to specifically marking the centenary of the end of the 1914-18 conflict.
The national focus will be on Glasgow Cathedral, from where a commemoration service will be broadcast across the country. But the plan is that there will be events locally as well.
The Rev Professor Norman Drummond, chair of WW100 and the Scottish Commemorations Panel which has advised the government on the centenary commemorations of the past four years, says: “We felt that on Remembrance Sunday, people across the UK would want to be amongst ‘their ain folk’, meaning that Remembrance Sunday should remain Remembrance Sunday rather than making it just about the centenary of World War One.
“But at 12 noon, it’s intended that the mood will shift. Across various areas there will be walks of gratitude and hope, so that people can come together, probably after a service or something within the community, and walk to their War Memorial. This is a way for communities to say ‘thank you’ but also to look to the future.”
The Glasgow service will be attended by HRH the Princess Royal, and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Rt Rev Susan Brown, will give the closing prayer and blessing.
Much of the service will be led by young people. There will be music from the National Youth Choir of Scotland and Legion Scotland Sweetheart, West Lothian singer Amy Hawthorn, and a speciallycommissioned fiddle piece from Orcadian musician Andy Cant.
The whole event is to be broadcast live by the BBC, narrated by former Royal Marine, broadcaster and para-athlete J J Chalmers (son of the Very Rev Dr John Chalmers, Moderator of the General Assembly in 2014 and the Church’s former Principal Clerk to the General Assembly).
Norman, who is a former chaplain to the Parachute Regiment and the Black Watch and a Chaplain to the Queen in Scotland, says that the service will be on four themes, reflecting the mixed emotions that greeted the armistice.
“There was sadness and relief in the first instance,” he says, “Then a dawn of joy and victory, and then a realisation that life could never be the same again, and of the need to summon courage and hope for the future.
“It will be a multi-generational service led predominantly by young people… and will bring a real sense of participation in seeking to highlight and address those four themes.
“We have been very keen to make sure our commemorations are earthed and realistic.
It was a day of victory, but there was so much yet to be done and so much sadness.”
For Norman and the rest of the Commemorations Panel, the service is the culmination of five years’ work and brings them back to where they started. The Cathedral was the setting for the event marking the centenary of the opening of the war, held on August 4 2014.
“It was the morning after the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, and we had an international Commonwealth attendance,” Norman recalls.
“Then on Sunday August 10 we had a triservice drumhead service on the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle. Attended in the teeth of Hurricane Bertha by 6000 people, and around 15-20,000 people down the Royal Mile.
“The Cockenzie and Port Seton Pipes and Drums were invited to stand down because of the weather, and the young Drum Major said: ‘No sir, we are not doing that, because this is nothing compared to the conditions those we remember went through.”
From there a series of commemorations have been held marking the centenaries of major WW1 events that have impacted on the country: Gallipoli; the Battle of Loos, the Battle of Jutland and the 1917 Battle of Arras, which involved 44 Scottish battalions – the largest concentration of Scots to take the ield of battle on any one day.
There have also been events marking the Quintinshill rail disaster, when over 200 people died, mostly soldiers from Edinburgh; and last year centenary celebrations marking the work of Dr Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals which mobilised 1500 Scottish nurses to treat wounded soldiers, despite the opposition of the British government.
Remembrance of the Battle of Arras
Quintinshill Tree of Life
Jutland commemorations launch
Islay Lord Robertson lays a wreath at sea
Earlier this year saw commemorations on the island of Islay of the sinkings of SS Tuscania on February 5 1918 and HMS Otranto on October 6 1918. A Stars and Stripes US lag, handmade overnight on the island so that the American soldiers who perished in the sinking of the Tuscania could be buried under their own lag, was temporarily returned to the island as part of the commemorations.
Also this autumn the acclaimed theatre production Far, Far From Ypres, has toured throughout Scotland and will have its final performance in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on the night of November 11. Devised, written and produced by Ian McCalman, the multimedia performance includes World War One songs from the trenches, marching and recruitment songs, music hall songs, contemporary songs and poetry.
Looking forward, the final major event will mark the sinking of the Iolaire of the Isle of Lewis on New Year’s Day 1919; and then attention will turn to the legacy left by the commemorations.
“When we began work in 2013 I wanted it to have three main emphases: education, genealogy and legacy,” says Norman.
“We’ve done our best since forming up as a panel to deliver on that.
“Our strapline was ‘What do We learn from all this?’ And all of our events have had historic documents which will be archived in due course and will feature in a World War One Scotland exhibit in 2019.”
Looking back over the five years, he pays tribute to what he says have been ‘many amazing people doing amazing things’ around the country.
“When we began our work there was a large number of organisations and people already preparing locally, and that pleased us greatly and encouraged us to make sure the national commemorations were delivered in an appropriate and significantly memorable way.
“I’d like to pay tribute to WW100 Scotland and the Scottish Commemorations panel for all they have contributed towards each and every major commemoration.
“Our work is not yet over and will be continuing until the spring of 2019, culminating with our exhibition.
“We are writing up our own reflections and a report, which we hope will be the sort of document we wished that we had to hand when we began, so that those who come after us in likely 2039 [for centenary commemorations of World War Two] will have an awareness of what we endeavoured to accomplish for Scotland.”
And he thinks that a legacy of the Panel’s work has been a raised awareness of the sacrifices of the World War 1 generation.
“I think these commemorations have sparked the lame in certain families who might have forgotten, but now will never forget.
“Our task has been to make sure that those feelings of sadness become those of admiration and gratitude, handed down from generation to generation.”
This article appears in the November 2018 Issue of Life and Work
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