FEW people can fail to have been moved by the pictures from the Tower of London over recent weeks and months.

Unveiled on 5 August – the centenary of Britain’s entry into World War I – a sea of ceramic poppies has covered the moat, inspired by the first line of a poem by an unknown soldier – ‘The blood swept lands and seas of red.’ Each of the 888,246 handmade flowers represents a British or colonial military death during the war.

Today the artwork is being dismantled – the flowers are being sold off to raise millions of pounds for service charities – the red tide slowly receding, reflecting the transience of life.

Over 2,000 men from Inverclyde were killed in the Great War.

Their sacrifice shared with the lives of their comrades as they signed up and set off for the killing fields of France and around the world.

As provost, councillor and a local man, I have always participated in the Act of Remembrance at this time of year.

On Sunday I laid a wreath at the War Memorial in Port Glasgow and yesterday led the Act of Remembrance on Armistice Day itself in Clyde Square.

This year has been particularly poignant with the centenary of the start of the First World War.

But our thoughts and respect should not be confined to one day in November each year.

It is important to remember that every day from now until Armistice Day 2018 will be the 100th anniversary of a family’s loss, however distant or remote that may seem.

A generation was effectively wiped out in four short years as war became a modern, mechanised method of killing. Lives were sacrificed for little territorial gain and families forced to pick up the pieces when it was all over.

The lessons have to be learned.

Politicians must pursue peaceful means to settle differences and disputes and we must support the men and women who serve us and our country in the pursuit of peace. Many words have been written about the horror and sacrifice of World War I by famous war poets such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke.

I would like to leave you with the words of one – written during the second battle of Ypres in 1915.

‘Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from falling hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.’ John McCrae