SDLP Mayor pays a
REMEMBRANCE Sunday began in Londonderry at 6am with lone pipers performing the traditional air ‘Battle’s O’er’ throughout the city.
Hours later, over 1,000 people stood in silence at the city’s Cenotaph as the Guildhall bells chimed at 11am, to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War.
Wreaths were laid by representatives from the DUP, UUP and SDLP, as well as groups representing the Royal British Legion, PSNI and UDR at the war memorial following a two-minute silence.
SDLP Mayor of Derry City and Strabane John Boyle, whose grandfather fought with the 10th Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, was among those who laid a wreath. He said it was important to remember the suffering of all on Remembrance Sunday.
“It’s clearly important as First Citizen of this city that you represent all shades of opinion around many things and of course that is why I am here in the first place,” he said.
“But I also have a very personal connection with this in that my own grandfather, Jack Rutherford, was a veteran of WWI.
“He was on the Western Front for three years. He suffered, he was wounded physically and, no doubt, psychologically for many years afterwards.
“My grandfather was born in this city in 1898 and lived to the grand old age of 85, thankfully.