‘You’re all top of the poppies’
Veteran’s praise for pupils’ display
Retired lieutenant colonel Andy Middlemiss described the installation of a poppy display made by pupils to mark the battle of Gallipoli as “absolutely amazing”.
The sea of poppies, all made from recycled materials, will remain on show at the front of the Pathfoot Building in Stirling University until June 14.
The art installation was unveiled on Thursday on the 100th anniversary of the 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division, who had trained at the university grounds, arriving in Gallipoli.
It was one of a series of events that took place last week to remember the battle, including an exhibition held inside Pathfoot.
Mr Middlemiss served with the Kings Own Scottish Borderers for 33 years and his own grandfather was a serving soldier who survived the failed allied campaign.
He said: “My grandfather was a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He served at the battle and came back to become a country GP. He had to endure appalling medical conditions. They couldn’t keep up with the number of sick and wounded but there were more casualties from illness and disease than from Turkish bombs.”
The Kings Own Scottish Borderers themselves lost 1727 men – a significant number for a regiment of its size – during the eight- month Dardanelles Campaign, as it was also known.
Mr Middlemiss explained: “The postie stopped delivering the mail as when the postie was coming up the street you knew your husband had been killed and there were so many of them.”
Last month pupils from Queen Victoria School visited Gallipoli on a trip led by Mr Middlemiss to see first hand the area where 25,000 men lost their lives trying to control the sea route from Europe to Russia.
Accompanying the teenagers were armed forces veterans and serving personnel as they walked in the footsteps of the soldiers and toured the cemeteries.
Pupils from Doune and St Ninians Primary Schools, Wallace High, Alva Academy, Carrongrange and Queen Victoria School attended the unveiling ceremony.
The poppies were designed by Forth Valley College students and hand made by pupils from Balfron, Doune, Killearn, and St Ninians Primary Schools, Bannockburn High, St Modan’s High, Wallace High, Alva Academy, Clackmannanshire Secondary Support, Carrongrange and Forth Valley College.
The display is reminiscent of the art installation, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, at the Tower of London last year.
That marked one hundred years since the first full day of Britain’s involvement in the First World War and featured 888,246 ceramic poppies, created by artists Paul Cummins and Tom Piper, each representing a British military fatality during the war.