Upper Tweeddale remembers

Everyone of any faith or none, is welcome at this service to mark this centenary.

The service will touch on the effects of the war in the local area and as part of this project, the Parishes of Upper Tweeddale have undertaken over the next four years to mark each of the 58 people commemorated on the various War Memorials on the Sunday nearest to the date of their death.

Some of them were very young, as young as 19, others had seen more of life and were over 40, some volunteered others were conscripted, some died in battle, others of wounds in hospital, some have a marked grave in a foreign field, some will have their name recorded on a Memorial Tablet whilst they lie under a stone bearing the legend “A Soldier of the Great War, Known Unto God” or have no marked resting place as their bodies were never found.

All of them are worthy of our remembrance and thanks for their sacrifice in order that we a century later might continue to live in freedom.

We will, in the words of John Binyon, remember them. We will remember the man who left the wide open skies of Peebleshire to die in a tunnel under the Somme battlefield, the man who left the banks of the Tweed to die on the shores of Gallipoli and all the others who now lie somewhere between Flanders and Turkey.

In the early summer of 1914, one hundred years ago, the young men and women of Upper Tweeddale would have been doing what young men and women had done for centuries.

Dreaming about the life they would have, who they would share it with and speculating on which of their dreams might come true. They may have paused occasionally to wonder if events in far off lands like Serbia (wherever that was) might affect them, even when they heard, if they did hear, of the murder of a member of Austrian royalty in a city they could scarce pronounce, Sarajevo was it?, how could that affect life here in this peaceful and beautiful valley?

No doubt they returned to their dreaming, working and getting on with life.

But those events so far away did have a dramatic effect on all their lives and for fifty seven men and one woman it meant the end of their lives decades too soon.

Those who remained behind would never be the same, those who were called away to serve in foreign lands would never be the same, this valley would never be the same, this country would never be the same. Everything would change or be changed and there was no going back to how things used to be.

Everyone of any faith or none, is welcome at this service to mark this centenary.

The service will touch on the effects of the war in the local area and as part of this project, the Parishes of Upper Tweeddale have undertaken over the next four years to mark each of the 58 people commemorated on the various War Memorials on the Sunday nearest to the date of their death.

Some of them were very young, as young as 19, others had seen more of life and were over 40, some volunteered others were conscripted, some died in battle, others of wounds in hospital, some have a marked grave in a foreign field, some will have their name recorded on a Memorial Tablet whilst they lie under a stone bearing the legend “A Soldier of the Great War, Known Unto God” or have no marked resting place as their bodies were never found.

All of them are worthy of our remembrance and thanks for their sacrifice in order that we a century later might continue to live in freedom.

We will, in the words of John Binyon, remember them. We will remember the man who left the wide open skies of Peebleshire to die in a tunnel under the Somme battlefield, the man who left the banks of the Tweed to die on the shores of Gallipoli and all the others who now lie somewhere between Flanders and Turkey.

In the early summer of 1914, one hundred years ago, the young men and women of Upper Tweeddale would have been doing what young men and women had done for centuries.

Dreaming about the life they would have, who they would share it with and speculating on which of their dreams might come true. They may have paused occasionally to wonder if events in far off lands like Serbia (wherever that was) might affect them, even when they heard, if they did hear, of the murder of a member of Austrian royalty in a city they could scarce pronounce, Sarajevo was it?, how could that affect life here in this peaceful and beautiful valley?

No doubt they returned to their dreaming, working and getting on with life.

But those events so far away did have a dramatic effect on all their lives and for fifty seven men and one woman it meant the end of their lives decades too soon.

Those who remained behind would never be the same, those who were called away to serve in foreign lands would never be the same, this valley would never be the same, this country would never be the same. Everything would change or be changed and there was no going back to how things used to be.