‘It’s important we remember’

I was honoured to lay the Scottish Parliament wreath in East Kilbride on Remembrance Sunday.

As always, the ceremony was moving.

All the organisations who laid their wreaths did so with due respect and I have particular praise for the many young folk involved from the Sea, Army and Air Cadets, Girls and Boys Brigades, Girlguides and Brownies, and the Scouts.

East Kilbride Pipe Band led the procession and the veterans and members of the Legion all acted with great dignity.

Unfortunately, across the world, we still see war, oppression and strife.

In 2017, Poet in Residence at the BBC, Stuart A Paterson, wrote a poem that provokes thought.

The last three verses read:

“What are we remembering?

Unimaginable terror, pain and disbelief that what was promised never to repeat was happening again.

What are we remembering?

Not only the horrors gone before but those we live through now across a world where bodies wash up on unwelcoming shores.

Who are we remembering?

A never-ending roll call of names from every land and language, regardless of place or race or colour. Remember them.”

Of course we should never forget.

It’s right that here in East Kilbride and in communities across Scotland we should remember our own.

The lads and men, volunteers, conscripts and regulars who died in the two World Wars; the wives, daughters, mothers, sisters and friends who suffered such pain and hardship in losing loved ones and coping with loved ones who came home damaged; the women and men who supported the military in hospitals and ancillary occupations.

It is generally agreed that over 125,000 Scots were killed in the Great WW1 alone. Communities were left bereft at such loss.

I recently met in Parliament with the CommonwealthWar Graves Commission.

In their own words “from Shetland to the Borders the CWGC ensures that the sacrifice of thousands of men and women who died during the World Wars is remembered in perpetuity”.

It is reckoned there are some 20,000 such war graves in Scotland.

There have been a few identified in East Kilbride.

They told me, for example, of that of Corporal Harry Miller, aged 40, and Private Anne Smillie Gledhill, aged only 22.

Poppy Scotland is the only charity officially recognised by the Scottish Parliament. Over five million poppies are distributed across Scotland to raise funds for the armed forces community.

Poppy Scotland stresses that their Remembrance Poppy is for all of those who serve and still serve.

At times of Remembrance we tend to think of the European conflicts – Flanders Field, the Desert campaigns, the Russian Front, the Arctic Convoys. Beyond the two World Wars, the conflicts that have taken place since have caused heartbreak for many.

From the post-WW2 conflicts in Malaysia and Palestine, through Suez to Afghanistan and Iraq, and now Yemen and Syria, war continues, people die and suffer.

As poet Stuart

Paterson says;“A never-ending roll call of names from every land and language. Regardless of place or race of colour”.

Ordinary folks generally, caught up in terror.

Remember them, and work towards a more peaceful world.