Eleventh

 On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918

the guns fell silent on the battlefields of the Great War, on land and at sea. Millions lay dead, countries were upended and subjected to revolution. 

The war to end all wars. 

Fast forward twenty years and ten months, to September 1939, and it started all over again. World War II did not come to a proper end until nearly six years later, after an atomic bomb vaporised the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The war to end all wars. 

Well, Korea, Suez, Vietnam, the Middle East, the Balkans, Ukraine followed. 

Lest we forget what sacrifices were made to safeguard our freedoms. Fragile as though it may be.

NaBloPoMo - Armistice Day 2021

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 103 years ago, the guns fell silent. An Armistice had come into force, ending hostilities in what later became known as the First World War. Of the 6,200 people from the Isle of Lewis who signed up to serve King and country since August 1914, more than athousand had made the supreme sacrifice. Inthe mud and horror of the trenches in France and Flanders, the terror of Gallipoli, the dust of the deserts in the Middle East, and on the seas of this world. The cup of loss had not yet been fully drained, it was to become clear. At the very start of 1919, the ship taking some three hundred island sailors home from the war sank at the entrance to Stornoway harbour. 201 perished, and the bodies of more than sixty were never recovered from the sea. The grief cannot be imagined. 

When the clock strikes eleven, my thoughts will be with all who lay down their lives in the service of their country. 

A special thought though for those affected by the Iolaire tragedy. In my 17 years in Lewis, this has always struck me as a singularly poignant loss. 

Gus am bris an Latha agus an teich na sgailean