Poppy Wall built in remembrance
STRATHNAVER Museum continued its four-year programme of remembrance events on Saturday with a gathering to publicise the Poppy Wall it has been creating in memory of the 216 men, and one woman, from the Mackay Country who gave their lives for their nation in the Great War.
The plastic poppies are currently on display in the precincts of the museum with ones for Halladale to Melness adorning a monument in the surrounding cemetery while those for Durness, Kinlochbervie and Scourie are on wreathes within the museum itself.
Each poppy bears the name, rank and regiment of the deceased individual and will eventually be removed from its current location and incorporated into wreathes to be laid at the 12 war memorials in north-west Sutherland during the centenary Armistice Day remembrance services on Sunday November 11 this year.
Prior to that, a further special event, where members of the public will be invited to help create the wreathes and share information, will be held at the Museum on November 3.
In the meantime the highlight of Saturday's ceremony was attendance by members of the Farr High School Army Cadet platoon together with their instructor, Pete Malone, who gave a speech on the implementation of the Armistice:
"Let's step back in time to just before dawn on the 11th November 1918. It is cold and foggy and the Sergeant has given the command to move to the fire step," he read.
"Dawn is the most likely time for an enemy attack and you've got be ready just in case. You stand on the step, rifle loaded, gazing across no man's land for signs of advancing German troops. You've heard the rumours that the war will be over soon. You've been hearing those since it started in 1914. The sky slowly lightens and the 'Stand Down' command is given. You're tired because you've been awake all night. Snipers make the hours of darkness the only safe time to move about the trenches.
"So far, the war has lasted four years, three months and 16 days. You don't know that at 5.20am an armistice was signed which will stop the fighting at 11am. The news is known in the capital cities of Europe before 6am but communications to the front are so poor that, even though the generals may know, the front-line troops don't. Some never find out.
"There are 11,000 casualties on the last morning of the war. George Ellison, the last British soldier to die, is shot at 9.30am while on patrol outside Mons in Belgium.
"Augustin Trebuchon, a runner in the French army bearing the message of the ceasefire to the front, is killed by a single shot at 10.45am. He is the last Frenchman to be killed.
"George Price, a Canadian aged 25, helping to clear the outskirts of Mons dies when a sniper makes another kill. He is the last Commonwealth soldier to die. It is two minutes before 11am.
"Sergeant Henry Gunther, an American ordered to attack a German position, is shot dead with a minute to go and becomes the last soldier to die during the Great War. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns fall silent along a battle front that stretches 440 miles from the English Channel to the Swiss border."
