On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns fell silent on the Western Front, out at sea and across other theatres of engagement of what was then known as the Great War. After millions had lost their lives in a conflict that had come to span the globe, hostilities came to an end. For just under twenty years.
Seven weeks later, two hundred and one sailors returning home to the island of Lewis in Scotland were lost when their transport, His Majesty's Yacht Iolaire sank after hitting rocks just outside Stornoway. Of those lost, the bodies of more than sixty were never recovered. The island community, which had been celebrating the end of four years of war, which had claimed more than a thousand of their number, was cast into profound mourning. The echoes of that terrible loss can still be felt today.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them
Aig àm dol fodha na grèine agus anns a’ mhadainn
Bidh sinn gan cuimhneachadh
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