THE 4th of August marked the centenary of the outbreak of World War one and I marked the occasion by attending a special centenary Remembrance Service in Greenock.
As we stood together, singing hymns and listening to poems from the early days of the Great War, I was struck by the tone and context of the hymns we sang, for they represented a moment in our history where war was seen as a great adventure.
However as with every passing minute, and every new hymn and new poem or story, we remembered the changing nature of that war as we recalled the changing nature of the trench warfare.
We remembered the true cost of war; millions of lives, the young and old, the men and boys, the countless families destroyed and the lives that would never be the same again.
The names of the 1,800 men who marched from this area to the battlefield and never returned were projected onto a giant screen allowing us all to remember them and to think about their sacrifice and the loss of their innocent, and too often, young lives.
As was the case across the United Kingdom and across Europe, candles were lit and extinguished at 11pm to mark the moment War was declared and to echo the words of Sir Edward Grey, the Home Secretary in 1914, who declared: “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our life-time.” It is true that no war is worth the loss of life. However, for the millions of men who died fighting for our freedom, we will never forget their sacrifice.
Their light will live on and shine in our memories.
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