Church to hold WWI ‘silhouette’ service

Hamilton’s St John’s Parish Church is to host a unique Remembrance Day silhouette service.

Twenty-nine men who were members of the church died in the Great War, and each will be represented by a silhouette that will sit among parishioners in the pews during the service on Sunday.

The silhouettes will include that of Private Robert Dawson, who served with the 10th Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment. He was just 22 when he was badly wounded in Candle Trench at Poelcapelle, nearypres.

He was taken to a British military hospital in Etaples in northern France where he died from his injuries on October 27, 1917.

The silhouettes were created by the There But Not There Armistice Project and 10 of them were funded by the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust with the remaining 19 paid for by the church.

Rev Joanne Hood, minister at St John’s, said:“each silhouette will have a cross placed beside it and the name of the man it represents.

“To have something tangible and visible to sit alongside is something that will bring that home to people in a more substantial way.

“I do not want war memorials to be simply a list of names. It needs to be about stories of lives and how they are still influencing people today.”

Turn to pages 25-27 for more on how the town will be marking the centenary of the end of the Firstworldwar.