A Drumhead Commemoration World War I - Scotland Remembers


A Drumhead Commemoration

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Good evening and welcome to Edinburgh.

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Earlier today, people gathered here at the castle for

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Scotland's Drumhead Ceremony - held in honour and in memory

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some fascinating stories of Scottish men and women during the Great War.

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But first, what does a Drumhead Ceremony involve?

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A Drumhead service is a religious occasion to service men in the field

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held for the purposes of ordinary Sunday worship and before going into

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battle or to remember fallen comrades. They've been in existence

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for centuries and Jerry the First World War and beyond they were held

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at home as a fitting way to remember the sacrifices of the men at the

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front. This rare film footage shows one held in a London park in 1916.

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By then most of the towns and villages of Britain would have been

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affected by the losses in the trenches or stop the Drumhead is a

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neatly piled set of drums with the colours draped over them to serve as

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a makeshift altar. Historically the drum played a crucial role as a way

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of communicating orders jarring the chaos of battle. With such an

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important point to play, drummers were elite soldiers and their

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important point to play, drummers colours. Drumhead services are

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important point to play, drummers while the drums that give them their

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name now have a purely ceremonial role, Drumhead services are as

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meaningful as ever and remain a fitting way to worship and to

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remember the fallen. Today?s Drumhead ceremony began

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at 10am. Among those who gathered here were

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people who had travelled from every corner of Scotland and

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from every branch of the military. It began with a march.

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Her Majesty's Royal Marines led the naval detachment onto the Esplanade.

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The Navy led the way because they are the senior service. Next came

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the army, led by the Band of The Royal Regiment of Scotland laying

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Scotland The Brave. They were followed by the Scots borderers, 1st

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Battalion Royal Reg and of Scotland, or one SCOTS, and finally

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the newest service, the RAAF were led on by the central staff band

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playing the RAF March Past. The First Minister Alex Salmond and the

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Secretary of State for Scotland Alistair Carmichael attended, as did

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senior officers from each branch of the military. Each service was

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represented by its own powdery. We meet in the presence of Almighty

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God. We've come together to mark the centenary of the outbreak of war in

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1914, to reflect on sacrifices past and to look to the future in hope.

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This year, and throughout the following five years, people in

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communities across Scotland will gather together and remember the

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exceptional sacrifice made by their forebears during the conflicts. What

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became known as the Great War. We commit ourselves today to work in

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penitence and faith, for reconciliation between people,

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communities and nations, that all people may live together in

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freedom, justice and peace. The hymn O God Our Help In Ages Past.

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# Our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home!

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Drumhead altars have been set up in many theatres of war, from Flanders

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in France to Iraq and Afghanistan. This one is being held here to mark

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the moment 100 years ago when the garrison of this castle went off to

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war. The colours were placed on the Drumhead in the same order of the

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Navy, whose colour is called and Benson, then the Army... And finally

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the air force, to form the alter. This service is all

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about remembering Scotland?s From the very first days of the war,

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some truly remarkable Scottish men and women were putting themselves

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in the line of fire. It all began on Tuesday, 4th August,

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1914, when German forces attacked Belgium, a country Britain had

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promised to protect. At 11pm that same day,

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Britain declared war on Germany. Just four days later,

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a glamorous Scottish aristocrat - Lady Millicent, the Duchess of

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Sutherland - set off for the war. Her plan was to assemble and lead a

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medical team into war-torn Belgium. Scottish crime writer Denise Mina

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was herself a nurse. She?s travelled to the little

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Belgian town of Namur to uncover In the August of 1914,

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Belgium was the last place on earth Despite these massive

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fortifications, despite a heroic resistance,

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the Germans crashed violently Historians would come to describe

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it as "the rape of Belgium". They killed civilians, women,

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children. And in the first day

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of the invasion, we count in the whole territory

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of Belgium 6000 civilians killed. Into this terrifying and chaotic

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war arrived a Scottish aristocrat. Lady Millicent,

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the Duchess of Sutherland. And she is the least likely

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person imaginable here. She is a 46-year-old aristocrat

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with three kids, houses in London. She's a famous socialite,

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but she comes here to a neutral country invaded by the might

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of the German army to do nursing Millicent hired a team

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of eight British nurses, Together, they travelled to

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the town of Namur, just a few miles They based themselves in the centre

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of the town, in the convent school She kept a meticulous diary

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of her time in Belgium. And she described

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the precise moment when the Germans On 21st August,

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she's in the town, having dinner with her entire team, and they look

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up and see a German plane in the sky, dropping a bomb over the

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city, and they know it's started. They leave everything

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and rush back to the convent. Down here in the cellar of the old

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convent, the children are cowering. There is the sound of constant

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bombardment from up above. It must have been deafening

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down here. Shored up against the walls are

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the supplies of flour and everything they need, and

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above us, the nurses and the Duchess are preparing for the first men to

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come in from the battlefield. Lady Millicent finds herself

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tending wounded men. She says in her diary that she is

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raising dying men up to receive She saw a surgeon cutting off a

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man's fingers because they were so mangled, and she saw one man die of

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sheer fright, which you can imagine. She writes in her diary,

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"Until these awful things happen, "no-one can conceive of the untold

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value of fully trained Two days after that first bomb,

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the Germans took control of Namur. We count 109 houses on fire,

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and also 75 civilians shot Working in desperate conditions,

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Millicent and her team continued to treat wounded French and Belgian

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soldiers. To guarantee their safety,

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she marched down into the town to confront the German

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commanding officer. In her diary, she noted that German

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soldiers now filled every cafe. In fact,

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she noted that they sang very well. In his hotel, General von Below

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assured Millicent that all the All of her patients were

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made prisoners of war. Some of them had just had

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operations and had not recovered. They were bundled onto trains

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and taken back to Germany. Millicent, quite a hardened,

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middle-aged woman, said it was On 5th September, Millicent

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was ordered to leave Namur. After a perilous two-week journey

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across German occupied Belgium, For me, Millicent coming here wasn't

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just a crazy act of bravery, she just didn't get caught up

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in the roar of indignation that She came here

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and started her nursing career, and she carried on nursing

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in France until the end of the war. So she took that social rupture

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and turned it I?m joined now by two of Scotland?s

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leading historians - Trevor Royle If we think back to Scotland of 1914

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when Lady Millicent arrived back home, what was happening? How did

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news of war arrived? You're talking about a population that is very

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reliant on the newspapers. There's no other immediate form of

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communication. Each newspaper would publish a new addition during the

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course of the day. These images we have of crowds forming very often

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crowds forming to get news. If you lived in a more rural area where it

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might be harder to get the latest edition of the newspaper, rather

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than concrete news, you were depending on rumour. They need to

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exchange information, the need to convert and gather in order to find

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out what was happening becomes very, very powerful. August the 4th,

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continuing over the fifth and sixth. The other thing to remember is that

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this is a country which is not expecting it necessarily to be a

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military response, but expecting a naval response. People aren't very

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clear what their own roles will be in the war, unless they happen to be

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in the Royal Navy. All they know is their lives are going to be thrown

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up in the air, they will be changed forever, but they are not very sure

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how or where they will be next month, let alone next year or the

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next decade. Pretty soon afterwards, people did begin to be invited to

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join up. What was the mood at that time? What was going through

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people's heads? We know from the evidence there was a great deal of

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excitement. Huge queues of people gathered, people lined up desperate

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to get into the Armed Forces. And that breeds a chain reaction,

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because there is a belief that if your body is going, you want to be

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part of the excitement, too, and a very important thing is that if you

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were going into the army, you would probably be going into your local

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regiment, and this is a great element in establishing unity and

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cohesion. Friends going off to war together. Nobody really knew with

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any certainty what they were going off to and if you spoke to any of

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those young men in August 1914, none of them would have any concrete idea

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of what life in the army was going to be like, let alone fighting a

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war. How did Britain go about building up what was at that time a

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relatively small army? It was a very serious challenge. The base which

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many people had expected to be the foundation of a larger army was the

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Territorial Army. The Territorial Army had not recruited as

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successfully as people had anticipated. It remained a big

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component for recruiting in Scotland in 1914 and 15, bigger than the rest

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of the UK. But the major change was to recruit what Kitchener called new

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arms, thousands of men, and those were the ones who captured people's

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imaginations, and it was those who provided the understanding that this

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was going to be a long war. When you enlisted in the new armies, you

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enlisted for three years or the duration of the war, and Kitchener

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had turned up at the Cabinet and said, this will be a three-year war.

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He did not explain why he thought that but this was a clear indication

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that this war might be a big undertaking. And just briefly,

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Trevor, they marched off with a song in their hearts? They did indeed,

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and very cleverly, the Army decided to build on the regimental system so

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very few new regiments were raised but regiment is like the Royal Scots

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and the light infantry just developed large numbers of

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battalions so they kept the badge and the sense of collection to the

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community. And this was a great age in recruiting and raising these

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armies. Thank you. I will come back to you later.

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Back in 1914, it was often said that everyone knew

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And many of these volunteers first saw action at one the major battles

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of 1915, the Battle of Loos, in the September of that year.

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Amongst them was a 20-year-old Scottish Officer.

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His name was Charles Hamilton Sorley and today he's considered Scotland's

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The Scottish novelist Andrew O'Hagan has travelled to Loos to uncover the

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story of the battle and the young poet who would immortalise its dead.

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Several generations of British readers got

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their introduction to poetry at school by studying the war poets.

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Many of these names are very familiar -

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Charles Sorley is less well-known, which is a surprise,

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not only because of the quality of his poetry, but because he was

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ahead of the others in understanding how the First World War would be

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When Charles Sorley arrived here, almost a century ago, these fields

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and mineworks were at the very centre of the Battle of Loos.

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For three weeks 100,000 allied soldiers attacked well-defended

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Amidst the fear, and noise and hell of the trenches, Sorley wrote

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This is the very spot where Charles Sorley was leading an attack

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against the German lines and, on the 13th of October 1915, was caught

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When they opened his kitbag after his death,

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they discovered the manuscript of what I think is the great poem

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of the First World War - When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead.

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It lacks jingoism, it lacks patriotism, it lacks

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This is a poem about a young man facing his own death, but seeing

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When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across

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your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men

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For, deaf, how should they know It is not

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Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.

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Then add thereto, "Yet many a better one has died before."

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Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you

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perceive one face that you loved heretofore, it is a spook.

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Great death has made all his for evermore.

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the feel of the wind coming off the North Sea.

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His father was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen,

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That would really be the place of his childhood.

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He wrote this poem, Stones, when he was merely a teenager,

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This field is almost white with stones That cumber all its thirsty

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crust And underneath I know are bones And all around is death and

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dust And if you love a livelier hue Or if you love the youth of year

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When all is clean and green and new Depart There is no summer here.

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It's hard to think of another British poet who not only foresaw

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his own death, but the death of an entire generation.

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Even in the earliest poems, which were written around

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about 1912, in other words when he was still at school, even then,

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It is that sense of scepticism towards authority,

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whether it's divine authority, or school authority, I think,

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that then goes on to inform his writing about the war.

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It's very striking, though, how early Sorley was

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in his understanding of what a terrible disaster the war could be.

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He says in the poem, it is easy to be dead.

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Reducing it almost to the simplest of phrases.

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You can see in your imagination, the lines of men,

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hands on one another's shoulder, blind, deaf, dumb, ruined by war.

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Heading off into a death which, in Sorley's view,

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is not off to Valhalla, it's not off to some kind of reward

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When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across

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your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men

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One of the things that led me here is a sense of pity, not only

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for the millions of young men who died, but for Sorley himself.

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The way he's been slightly forgotten as a poet.

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To me, he's right at the forefront of the poets who

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If it was up to me, I would put his great poem, When You

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See Millions of the Mouthless Dead, in every classroom in Scotland.

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# Death of death, and hell's destruction

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We give thanks to all those who have served in the name of the Crown,

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enabling us to live in peace and security. And those who are in

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operations around the world, on land, in sea and in air. Protect

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them from all danger and give to them courage to meet all occasions

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with discipline and loyalty. To the honour of your name. Lord, in your

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mercy, hear our prayer. This hymn for those in peril on the sea pays

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tribute to the different branches of the military.

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During this hymn, the altar was dismantled and the colours returned.

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By 1915, people at home in Scotland were

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coming to realise that this war was unlike any they had known before,

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Every town began to hear of the casualties and one city - Dundee

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Ricky Ross has returned to his native city to uncover how

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Dundee came to terms with the loss of so many of her young men.

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In 1914, when the recruiting officers came to Dundee, they found

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Both my grandfathers fought in the Great War, like

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so many men from Dundee, but it is the 4th Battalion, The Black Watch,

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Dundee's own, that came to symbolise the sacrifice made by the city.

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The 4th was a territorial battalion and many men were already

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We are currently standing outside the City of Dundee

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This was where at the outbreak of the First World War,

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local Territorials, men from the 4th Black Watch, men from

:28:29.:28:31.

the local units of the Engineers, the Artillery, the Medical Corps,

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The 4th Black Watch really represented Dundee society

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So you have a good number of men from the textile jute works,

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a good number from the engineering factories and shipyards.

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The Officer Corps really reflect the great and good of Dundee society.

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Was this an attractive proposition, to sign up?

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The minute war was declared, people took the opportunity to

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enlist, obviously in a patriotic spirit to do their bit for King and

:29:11.:29:13.

This was an opportunity for men who probably had been no

:29:14.:29:18.

further than Dundee to go abroad with their friends.

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On February 23, 1915, the 4th Battalion Black Watch left

:29:29.:29:31.

The farewell was a great event in the city, and families lined

:29:32.:29:37.

the streets to say goodbye, not knowing whether they would ever

:29:38.:29:40.

Getting news from the front became a priority for those at home.

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In Dundee, if you need to know what's going on, it's all here

:29:52.:29:54.

in the local papers, and it was exactly the same during the war.

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This is where people came for the news from the trenches.

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Lisa Giffen is opening the archives of publisher DC Thomson

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to show me how the Dundee Courier reported the war.

:30:07.:30:11.

It printed not just news, but also the soldiers' own letters

:30:12.:30:14.

and accounts sent home from the battlefield.

:30:15.:30:20.

One example of that is here, when you see this article -

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"Dundee's own in trenches sends private letter to parents".

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So people are actually writing to their families directly

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from the trenches, and then the families are bringing it to the

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Courier so that it can be published and others can read the letters.

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And here, you see the battle of Neuve Chapelle.

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This is Private James Forbes of the 4th Black Watch referring to

:30:46.:30:48.

the battle of Neuve Chapelle as "three and a half hours' hell".

:30:49.:30:53.

It's the men's direct experiences, simply being set in type

:30:54.:30:55.

Almost a parallel to the modern-day bloggers.

:30:56.:31:00.

By early 1915, the Courier itself had over 100 members

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Among them was illustrator Joseph Gray.

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He would have done small illustrations,

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but he would write and send letters back from the front as well.

:31:21.:31:24.

He took it all in and passed it on, and it certainly haunted him.

:31:25.:31:29.

Gray's experiences in the war came to be reflected in his art.

:31:30.:31:34.

One of his pictures still hangs in Dundee's McManus Galleries.

:31:35.:31:41.

I have been in this gallery many times before

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and I've passed this painting many times before, but today is probably

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the first time I've realised the full significance of it.

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It's a scene painted after the battle of Neuve Chapelle,

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and you can see here, the officers, and on the other side,

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This is the commanding officer, Harry Walker.

:31:57.:32:05.

Who knows, perhaps at this side, one of these characters may well be

:32:06.:32:08.

By the end of the year, nearly everyone in this painting was dead.

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After Neuve Chapelle, the 4th Battalion joined

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the 30,000 other Scotsmen who would fight at the Battle of Loos.

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It commemorates all those who served in The Black Watch from 1914.

:32:32.:32:39.

You're talking about nearly 9000 men who lost

:32:40.:32:41.

What proportion of that number were at the Battle of Loos?

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There would be quite a high proportion, actually,

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because the Battle of Loos involved the majority of

:32:52.:32:53.

The job of the City of Dundee battalion was to act as a feint

:32:54.:33:06.

and to draw the German reserves away from the main battle.

:33:07.:33:10.

They actually succeeded greatly and what they did.

:33:11.:33:13.

Of course, that was at the city of Dundee's cost.

:33:14.:33:17.

The 4th Battalion had come to embody Dundee's hopes, pride and sorrow.

:33:18.:33:24.

As Joseph Gray wrote, "In the 4th, the whole city finds glory "

:33:25.:33:27.

Every year on 25th September, the anniversary of the Battle

:33:28.:33:36.

of Loos, a lantern is lit on top of this memorial in memory

:33:37.:33:40.

of the men who lost their lives during the Great War.

:33:41.:33:44.

63% of Dundee's eligible men joined the armed forces.

:33:45.:33:47.

Of that number, over 4,000 were killed, one of the highest totals

:33:48.:33:50.

As the Drumhead service finished, the military personnel began

:33:51.:34:13.

their processional march down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace.

:34:14.:34:23.

Massed pipes and bands included groups from the Commonwealth. Many

:34:24.:34:32.

of those who attended the service also joined the parade. It was a

:34:33.:34:37.

spectacle reminiscent also joined the parade. It was a

:34:38.:34:41.

Scottish Greg Eden - regiment a century ago as they marched off to

:34:42.:34:42.

war. There were mixed reactions

:34:43.:34:45.

among those who witnessed their departure then and no doubt

:34:46.:34:46.

many here felt the same today. A drum tap and the Edinburgh city

:34:47.:35:22.

War Memorial. My great-great-grandfather worked in

:35:23.:35:27.

the Adriatic and he was working to trap Austrian submarines with wire

:35:28.:35:33.

nets. On the 15th of May 1917, they were confronted by Austrian cruisers

:35:34.:35:38.

and the Austrians got a munch their drifter fleet and began to destroy

:35:39.:35:45.

them all. 47 crews out there and 14 of them were sunk that day. One

:35:46.:35:50.

house in Edinburgh also suffered a direct hit by a bomb dropped by a

:35:51.:35:56.

German Zeppelin in April 1916. Hamish McLaren's father was a little

:35:57.:36:02.

boy in the house. Everybody was in bed. There were two maids at the

:36:03.:36:09.

very top, they were sheltering under the beds, but the other ones didn't

:36:10.:36:19.

bother to move. My aunt, the wardrobe fell over her bed and the

:36:20.:36:24.

rafters came down. Attending or watching today, it was a chance to

:36:25.:36:29.

reflect and to show appreciation of what the men who marched along

:36:30.:36:34.

streets like this all over Scotland 100 years ago gave to all of us who

:36:35.:36:36.

came after. The second year of

:36:37.:36:38.

the war didn?t go particularly well for the allies, including the Battle

:36:39.:36:41.

Of Loos, where so many young Scots And the blame for that year's

:36:42.:36:44.

failures was in every newspaper. They determined that Britain's brave

:36:45.:36:51.

soldiers had been defeated To win the war, Britain would need

:36:52.:36:53.

to dramatically increase production. The dangerous job

:36:54.:36:58.

of building those shells fell Scottish actor and comedian Elaine C

:36:59.:37:02.

Smith has travelled to Gretna in search of the women who risked

:37:03.:37:08.

their lives to build the explosive Nine miles long and two miles wide,

:37:09.:37:11.

from Eastriggs in the west, stretching past Gretna across the

:37:12.:37:20.

border into Longtown in the east. This was once the biggest factory

:37:21.:37:26.

in the world. This was His Majesty's Factory,

:37:27.:37:30.

Gretna. Virtually all of the buildings have

:37:31.:37:33.

either been removed or buried, but the footprint of the site is

:37:34.:37:43.

still visible ? and is staggering. The site had to be

:37:44.:37:52.

so spread out due to the dangerous It was a safety measure to ensure

:37:53.:37:55.

that an explosion in one building The complex had 125 miles

:37:56.:38:01.

of railway tracks, 30 miles At its peak, His Majesty's Factory,

:38:02.:38:06.

Gretna, was turning out over 800 That is more than all the other

:38:07.:38:17.

munitions factories put together. By the summer of 1915,

:38:18.:38:27.

less than a year into the war, Britain was already desperately

:38:28.:38:30.

short of artillery shells. of Munitions, David Lloyd George,

:38:31.:38:40.

commissioned the factory. Two years later,

:38:41.:38:45.

Gretna was at peak production. Two thirds

:38:46.:38:49.

of the workers were women. I'm meeting Dr Chris Brader,

:38:50.:38:53.

a historian who is currently writing So, Chris, tell me, what is it

:38:54.:38:56.

that makes this place so special? I think it's true to say that

:38:57.:39:03.

without this factory and the contribution it made,

:39:04.:39:06.

that Britain might not have won So, Chris, this was obviously

:39:07.:39:09.

a massive operation. Well, the Government issued

:39:10.:39:17.

an open invitation to the women Those that answered

:39:18.:39:25.

the call came from all over Scotland, from Ireland, from Wales

:39:26.:39:28.

and from the north-east of England. You just said it was mainly

:39:29.:39:32.

women that were here. Were they of

:39:33.:39:35.

a certain age or was it all ages? A large proportion of them were

:39:36.:39:38.

actually aged between 16 and 21. And we do know, actually,

:39:39.:39:43.

that girls lied about their age to So there were 15-year-old

:39:44.:39:45.

girls working here. Well, some

:39:46.:39:48.

of it was incredibly hard and some If you worked in the sections where

:39:49.:39:52.

you mixed the nitric acid with the sulphuric acid, you had to work

:39:53.:39:57.

amid those fumes as well. It was also hard,

:39:58.:40:00.

physical work as well. Women cut the cordite

:40:01.:40:06.

into appropriate lengths. They then loaded them

:40:07.:40:09.

into the trucks and pushed those trucks to the drying section,

:40:10.:40:11.

which was a mile away. Sometimes,

:40:12.:40:16.

in the middle of the night, in the middle of the Scottish winter,

:40:17.:40:18.

with rats running around your feet. Now, that's hard physical work

:40:19.:40:23.

by anyone's definition. I want to find out more

:40:24.:40:33.

about the women who toiled Very nice to meet you,

:40:34.:40:36.

I take it you're Jim? Three of his aunts went to work

:40:37.:40:45.

in the factory in 1916. So, your aunts went to work at

:40:46.:40:52.

the munitions factory, didn't they? Was it seen

:40:53.:41:06.

as a good thing to work there? One aunt, my Aunt Margaret, within

:41:07.:41:12.

a few months she was a supervisor. So she became one

:41:13.:41:17.

of the high heid yins? This is a certificate of service,

:41:18.:41:21.

given when she left employment. This is a report card I

:41:22.:41:26.

would never have got. "Her conduct and efficiency during

:41:27.:41:32.

the She is energetic, reliable

:41:33.:41:35.

and has good control of labour." Jim's Aunt Margaret Wilkie lived

:41:36.:41:42.

to the ripe old age of 91. But many munitions workers

:41:43.:41:50.

were less fortunate. Across the UK it's believed there

:41:51.:41:57.

were over 1,000 casualties from At the Gretna factory, seven lost

:41:58.:41:59.

their lives, while many others poor health from handling the

:42:00.:42:27.

hazardous chemicals, though suffered the long term impact of working

:42:28.:42:31.

here has never been fully revealed. the past, when I've thought

:42:32.:42:36.

about Gretna, it has conjured up images of blacksmiths and couples

:42:37.:42:38.

running away to get married. Having been to this amazing place,

:42:39.:42:41.

it feels almost haunted, as well. But it's made me realise that

:42:42.:42:45.

a lot of sacrifice took place here, of the munitions generated here did

:42:46.:42:49.

go on and kill and maim thousands of people, without them go on and

:42:50.:42:58.

kill and maim thousands of people, without them the course

:42:59.:43:02.

of world history would have changed Much of that is

:43:03.:43:04.

down to the women and men of Much of that is down to the women and men

:43:05.:43:07.

of His Majesty's Factory, Gretna. During and after the war,

:43:08.:43:10.

Scottish doctors pioneered life-saving treatments

:43:11.:43:12.

for injuries to the body and mind. To the south of here, Craiglockhart

:43:13.:43:15.

became the world leader On Clydeside, Erskine Hospital

:43:16.:43:17.

would employ shipyard engineers Less well known is the story

:43:18.:43:20.

of a humble family doctor from Ayr. A man who would revolutionise

:43:21.:43:24.

the way injured men were treated on the battlefield, before they had

:43:25.:43:27.

even reached a doctor. And, remarkably,

:43:28.:43:30.

his medical techniques and philosophies are still used

:43:31.:43:36.

by modern-day battlefield medics. Rory Bremner?s great-grandfather was

:43:37.:43:41.

himself a military medic, in Crimea. And Rory has set out to

:43:42.:43:50.

uncover Charles McKerrow?s At the outbreak of the Great War,

:43:51.:43:52.

this house in Barns Street in Ayr was the home and surgery of

:43:53.:44:02.

Dr Charles McKerrow. He'd inherited the practice

:44:03.:44:08.

from his father, George. In January 1915 Charles married

:44:09.:44:11.

his wife Jean. and in the June

:44:12.:44:15.

of that same year he enlisted The young doctor was appointed to

:44:16.:44:17.

the 10th Battalion Arriving in France,

:44:18.:44:24.

he began to train the medical team around him, and in

:44:25.:44:30.

particular his stretcher bearers. At that time,

:44:31.:44:36.

these men were selected for their strength and bravery,

:44:37.:44:37.

not their medical experience. The stretcher bearers are not

:44:38.:44:47.

Royal Army Medical Corps, We could equate it to scoop

:44:48.:44:49.

and run ? just put a dressing on, put them on a stretcher

:44:50.:44:57.

and get them out the firing line. So along comes Charles McKerrow,

:44:58.:45:00.

this physician surgeon from Ayr, McKerrow wants to make sure that

:45:01.:45:04.

his regimental stretcher bearers are more highly trained than is

:45:05.:45:10.

normally required. He wants to make sure that they

:45:11.:45:12.

can stop haemorrhage that they can splint limbs, and they can do lots

:45:13.:45:16.

of other basic medical chores. Not only does this help him,

:45:17.:45:20.

as the regimental medical officer, from a morale point of view the men

:45:21.:45:23.

in the battalion will be more than satisfied knowing, if they are

:45:24.:45:29.

wounded, the chance of them having their life saved is a lot

:45:30.:45:33.

better than would normally be. So, in a sense, he's almost like

:45:34.:45:36.

the father of the modern paramedic? McKerrow's strategy

:45:37.:45:40.

of getting trained medics to front But, in its day,

:45:41.:45:49.

it represented a new way And, today, McKerrow's techniques

:45:50.:45:55.

are still taught to a new generation The first ten minutes,

:45:56.:46:03.

we call it the platinum ten minutes, that's the most important time for a

:46:04.:46:16.

combat medical technician to really be on the ball, get in there and

:46:17.:46:19.

treat the casualty straight away. The first thing that we deal with

:46:20.:46:22.

in any port of call is catastrophic haemorrhage and we've got lots

:46:23.:46:27.

of different things that we can use The role played by Charles McKerrow

:46:28.:46:30.

in developing these techniques is The legacy that he provided

:46:31.:46:50.

certainly lives on today, and the idea of pushing medical care

:46:51.:46:54.

as far forward as possible. Because we realised, as he did,

:46:55.:46:57.

that theres no point in having a wonderful hospital or casualty

:46:58.:47:00.

clearing station if the casualties Late

:47:01.:47:02.

in 1916 Charles was posted here, to the village of Vlamertinghe,

:47:03.:47:16.

a few miles West of Ypres. On the 19th

:47:17.:47:20.

of December he wrote to his wife "You say that this is our longest

:47:21.:47:23.

separation so far. I shall tick off each day carefully

:47:24.:47:31.

in my diary when it arrives. The very next day,

:47:32.:47:34.

McKerrow was here, at Maple Copse, returning from an early morning

:47:35.:47:44.

tour of the front line. A shell exploded nearby and Charles

:47:45.:47:48.

was gravely wounded. As a medical officer, he would have

:47:49.:47:56.

known how serious his injuries were. He was taken to a local dressing

:47:57.:48:01.

station and spent the rest of the day conscious, asking after

:48:02.:48:04.

the state of his pulse, even asking At half past eight

:48:05.:48:07.

in the evening he lost consciousness Charles McKerrow is buried here,

:48:08.:48:12.

in Lijssenthoek military cemetery. In the weeks and months

:48:13.:48:25.

after his death, Jean received dozens of letters

:48:26.:48:27.

from men of all ranks who had known For me, the most moving was one

:48:28.:48:31.

written by the Regimental Chaplain, He wrote,

:48:32.:48:44.

"Your dear husband yielded up his life nobly and grandly, ministering

:48:45.:48:47.

to the wounded and the dying, that mothers might have their sons

:48:48.:48:51.

back, and wives their husbands." For the final part of the day,

:48:52.:49:10.

people assembled in Holyrood Park, where a memorial

:49:11.:49:12.

of over 1,000 headstones has been built in the powerful form

:49:13.:49:15.

of a Commonwealth War Cemetery. It was erected yesterday. I think

:49:16.:49:32.

visiting a Commonwealth War Graves is a profoundly emotional and moral

:49:33.:49:37.

moment. It is incredibly humbling and each grave carries its own

:49:38.:49:41.

story, and I rather hope this particular Memorial here will

:49:42.:49:44.

stimulant people into wanting to go to France and Belgium to see the

:49:45.:49:51.

graves where the scale frankly dwarfs this. I think this should

:49:52.:49:53.

simply be a catalyst. I'm joined here again by

:49:54.:50:06.

Trevor Royle and At the end of the war, many, many

:50:07.:50:16.

did not come back but some did. What kind of Scotland did they come back

:50:17.:50:22.

to? Well, they came back to a Scotland that was of course divided

:50:23.:50:26.

as the rest of the country was about whether this was a victory or moment

:50:27.:50:30.

of mourning and reflection, and of course it is both of those things.

:50:31.:50:37.

Throughout the 1920s, those two emotions, if you like, were in

:50:38.:50:41.

competition. The notion that this was all about waste and futility

:50:42.:50:47.

took time to becoming drenched. I think most historians would date it

:50:48.:50:53.

from the late 1920s. But in the early 1920s, people had many

:50:54.:50:56.

competing responses to this war. Remember, particularly for Glasgow,

:50:57.:51:00.

this has been an Iraqi industrial boom. The shipbuilding and munitions

:51:01.:51:06.

facility is thrived on the back of the war. -- and industrial boom. It

:51:07.:51:18.

brought people back home. In 1919, 1920, there was a lot of uncertainty

:51:19.:51:22.

about which direction people were going to, just as there was

:51:23.:51:27.

uncertainty at the beginning of the war. Is your place going to be in

:51:28.:51:36.

Scotland or outside Scotland? Things over a much remembered about the war

:51:37.:51:41.

in shorthand. Much trenches, massive loss and a portrait of the war

:51:42.:51:47.

poets, of course. To what extent was that a uniform experience and to

:51:48.:51:50.

what extent is it right that the shorthand should be what dominates

:51:51.:51:56.

our view? We have to be very careful when we bring forward the war poets

:51:57.:52:00.

and novelists as witnesses. As important as their work is, one of

:52:01.:52:04.

the things that has happened because of the writing, a lot of it very

:52:05.:52:08.

fine and observational, heartfelt and passionate, is that every day of

:52:09.:52:13.

the war becomes the first day of the Battle of the song, with huge

:52:14.:52:19.

courtesies, or every battlefield is not all around you. The war wasn't

:52:20.:52:23.

like that. But it was for some people and it was in doses, so to

:52:24.:52:28.

speak. But it wasn't like that all the time. But for those coming back,

:52:29.:52:31.

I think the principal feeling was one en route -- of relief, because

:52:32.:52:37.

we have to put it into context. These are young people who have come

:52:38.:52:40.

back and they are alive and certainly reading the letters of a

:52:41.:52:44.

lot of soldiers of the First World War, relief is their utmost feeling

:52:45.:52:51.

in 1918, 1919. Behind the programme of commemorations that begin today

:52:52.:52:58.

in Scotland, is the idea, what can we learn from this? The centenary,

:52:59.:53:03.

because it is a five-year programme in Scotland, it is a real

:53:04.:53:08.

educational opportunity, a wonderful opportunity. And I think it is very

:53:09.:53:12.

important that we don't rush to the end, that we don't rush to

:53:13.:53:18.

remembrance, rushed to commemoration. Because if we do

:53:19.:53:22.

that, first of all we will reproduce what we do already. And secondly,

:53:23.:53:29.

what we won't do is go through the war as they did. They were not all

:53:30.:53:33.

dead at the beginning of the war and most of them were not dead at the

:53:34.:53:38.

end of the war. 88% of the UK population came back and there is

:53:39.:53:42.

good reason to say that applies to most Scots in the same proportion.

:53:43.:53:48.

So there is time and we should use that time. Thank you very much

:53:49.:53:49.

indeed to both of you. For almost 100 years since the first

:53:50.:53:54.

war memorials were built, the people of Scotland have come together to

:53:55.:53:57.

remember their fallen sons. This living memorial in Holyrood

:53:58.:54:02.

Park is only the most recent. And it's a Scotsman who wrote some

:54:03.:54:05.

of the finest songs in memory From his home town of Adelaide,

:54:06.:54:08.

this is Eric Bogle. # Well, how do you do

:54:09.:54:11.

Private Willie McBride? # Do you mind if I sit here

:54:12.:54:14.

down by your graveside? # I wrote No Man's Land

:54:15.:54:17.

after a trip to Flanders in 1975. You can read all the books you

:54:18.:54:23.

like and see all the pictures you like, but to be there walking among

:54:24.:54:29.

the gravestones, walking in the old battlefields, seeing the monuments -

:54:30.:54:32.

that's when it really hits home, # Well, how do you do

:54:33.:54:37.

Private Willie McBride? # Do you mind if I sit here

:54:38.:54:49.

down by your graveside? # And I'll rest for a while

:54:50.:54:56.

in the warm summer sun # Been walking all day long

:54:57.:55:03.

and I'm nearly done # And I see by your gravestone

:55:04.:55:12.

you're only 19 # When you joined

:55:13.:55:19.

the glorious fallen in 1916 # I hope you died quick

:55:20.:55:26.

and I hope you died clean # Or, Willie McBride,

:55:27.:55:32.

was it slow and obscene? # Did they beat the drum slowly?

:55:33.:55:40.

Did they sound the fife lowly? # Did the rifles fire o'er ye

:55:41.:55:46.

as they lowered ye down? # Did the bugles sing The Last Post

:55:47.:55:55.

in chorus? # Did the pipes play

:55:56.:56:03.

the Flowers Of The Forest? # And I can't help but wonder

:56:04.:56:19.

Willie McBride # Do all those who lie here

:56:20.:56:25.

know why they died? # Did you really believe them

:56:26.:56:32.

when they told you The Cause? # Did you really believe that

:56:33.:56:39.

this war would end wars? # Well the suffering, the sorrow

:56:40.:56:48.

The glory, the shame # The killing, the dying

:56:49.:56:54.

It was all done in vain # For, Willie McBride

:56:55.:57:01.

It's all happened again # And again, and again

:57:02.:57:08.

And again, and again # Did they beat the drum slowly?

:57:09.:57:15.

Did they sound the fife lowly? # Did the rifles fire o'er ye

:57:16.:57:23.

as they lowered ye down? # Did the bugles sing The Last Post

:57:24.:57:31.

in chorus? # Did the pipes play

:57:32.:57:39.

the Flowers Of The Forest? # Did the bugles sing The Last Post

:57:40.:57:48.

in chorus? # And did the pipes play

:57:49.:57:55.

the Flowers Of The Forest? # Eric Bogle with

:57:56.:58:09.

his personal tribute to one fallen soldier on a truly remarkable day

:58:10.:58:11.

when we've seen tributes to tens

:58:12.:58:16.

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