Remembrance

 We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain,
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly, and spent
Their lives for us, loved, too the sun and rain?
A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings –
But we, how shall we turn to little things,
And listen to the birds and wind and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?
(WW Gibson, The Watsonian, July 1919)

The poppies at the Tower of London, marking the centenary of the start of World War 1.  We were in London at the weekend and by chance rather than design were staying very near the Tower.  As a result we were able to visit late in the evening and then early next morning when the pressure of the crowd was slightly less.  Even so, we were part of a huge, silent mass of people. 
 

The installation, 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' by ceramic artist Paul Cummins consists of 888, 246 ceramic poppies, one for every British or colonial death during the war.  After Armistice Day the installation will be dismantled and the individual poppies sent to those who have bought them, the proceeds going to six service charities.  
 

Returning to Scotland, and Edinburgh Castle.
 

The poem at the head of this post is by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, one of a group of poets known as 'the war poets' and including well-known names such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. It was published in the annual magazine of my children's school, George Watson's College, in 1919.  The school has just brought out a history of the school during World War 1, including accounts of war service and the tragic loss of young life.  In all 3102 members of the school community served in the forces - former pupils and current and former staff - with 605 losing their lives.  Of this lost generation, I only have space to mention two.

William Gordon "Seggie" Brown was a brilliant mathematician, who enlisted as a private rather than going to university.  He somehow continued with his studies in the trenches, providing the mathematical theory of a phenomenon in optics.  "It was said at the time that only two other people had achieved so much as undergraduates: Clerk-Maxwell and Kelvin. Seggie also left behind him other papers, some of which were placed in 1922 before the Royal Society of Edinburgh.  These dealt with tubes of electrical force in a four-dimensional space.  Seggie had arrived independently at the same conclusions regarding relativity as had Albert Einstein." [Watson's At War 1914-1918]  Seggie was killed in 1916 in the battle of the Somme, aged 20. 

Cecil Frederick Coles was a gifted musician who entered Edinburgh University to study music at the age of 16.  At the age of 23 he was appointed assistant conductor of Stuttgart Royal Opera.  During the war he was a stretcher-bearer.  He continued to compose in the trenches, sending shrapnel-torn manuscripts to Gustav Holst with whom he had a close friendship.  "Cecil was the musician of a doomed generation. His Behind the Lines, composed in 1918 amidst the thunder of the guns, has strength, depth and beauty, the last movement, Cortege, being the most powerful and haunting." [Watson's at War 1914-1918].  He was killed by a sniper in 1918, having volunteered to bring in wounded comrades following an attack.