Armistice Day ....

Armistice Day 2018 (Sunday) ....

Winter....

The cutting wind nipped to the bone,

The rifle froze the hand,

And all day long the shrapnel searched

The frost-encrusted land.

To face a madly charging foe

Demands a courage bold,

But more than that is needed to

Combat incessant cold.

The above verse is taken from the poem ‘The Veteran’ .... by

Sergeant Frank Brown.

“At the going down of the sun

And in the morning

We will remember them”.

Laurence Binyon.

A detachment of Gordon Highlanders in action - March 1918.

Today we remember the Fallen of the Great War:  I will be thinking of my Grand Uncle, Pte Fred Bruce, of the Gordon Highlanders who fell in April 1918.    The photograph shows some Gordon Highlanders in action a few weeks before ‘Uncle Fred’ was killed.   We will never know if he is one of the soldiers in the photo but when I inserted his picture into the photograph I felt that I was putting him back with his friends.

Geoff - with the Episcopal Church wreath.

09.30     We have a quiet morning... everything is wet after overnight rain, and there is a nip in the air, but it’s a bonnie morning for reflecting on the relief felt by millions on this morning, a 100 years ago, after the Armistice was signed that brought an end to the horror that was ‘The Great War’ (it didn’t become WW1 until 1939)... and the guns fell silent at 11.00.

19.00    The weather stayed dry, though cold, until after the wreath laying ceremonies at Elie and Kilconquhar;  the afternoon has been miserable.... windy, wet and cold.   I went to both War Memorial ceremonies, and managed to get a few photographs at both.    The Elie crowd was the biggest that I have seen;  the Kinneuchar crowd, though smaller than Elie, was also excellent.   Police were in attendance at both;  stopping the traffic for the duration of the actual service.   It was good seeing young people at both War memorials.

“They will be remembered!”

.Elie

Tomorrow is forecast to be grey and damp in the morning, with sunny spells in the afternoon..... and...  slightly warmer.    It looks like my new sheets will have to wait for another day to be washed. ... as tomorrow does not look like being a good drying day.

Kilconquhar War Memorial.