Angus Macleod annual lecture set for next week
The late Angus Macleod is well known for more than 30 years’ service as a minister, but he is equally remembered as the most decorated Lewisman of the First World War.
This year the annual lecture given in his memory will be even more poignant, coming as it does on November 8, just days before Remembrance Sunday and the 100th anniversary of the armistice that saw the end of the Great War.
The lecture, to be held at Pairc School, Gravir, will be the 15th annual such event and will be delivered by Dr Macleod’s nephew and namesake, Dr Angus Macmillan, formerly of Lemreway.
Entitled The Hero of Buzancy – Leading the Line, the lecture is open to all with free admission and starts at 7.30pm.
Dr Macmillan said that, apart from giving a brief narrative of his uncle’s life, and particularly his heroic activities in the military, he will also consider some wider issues, such as the nature of heroism in the context of the military strategies of the time, and the impact of the appalling losses in the First World War campaigns on the community of Lewis.
The island lost proportionally more men than any other region of Britain.
For Lewis these losses included the Iolaire disaster: ‘I want to look at how that became a literally unspeakable event, casting an impenetrable gloom on island life for many years,’ said Dr Macmillan.
‘Angus left four war diaries, a collection of talks given in the 1930s, and a further source of information is the book written by his son, Kenneth, titled The Hero of Buzancy.
‘However, there is much that is not included in these sources, not least the contradictions implicit in a religious man – who later went on to become a minister – being caught up in the savagery and carnage of the Western Front.
‘I am interested, as a psychologist, in trying to understand how he represented his own life in his writings – the matters he dwelt on and what remained unspoken.
‘He comes across as a very modest man with no interest whatsoever in the gaining of medals – it is in fact very difficult to glean from his diaries how or why he was awarded them, in becoming the most decorated soldier from Lewis in the First World War.
‘I have subtitled the talk Leading the Line, to touch on the two central domains in Angus’s life – firstly, ‘leading the line’ in the military sense, and then in the sense of ‘leading’ and precenting a Gaelic psalm, to reflect the time in his life when he was happiest and found peace in his life. I will be reading a poem to reflect these themes.’