On Sunday 11 November St Andrews remembered the fallen and marked 100 years since the end of World War 1.
They did so with the traditional parade of the armed forces from Holy Trinity Church to the War Memorial at the Cathedral.
The parade, featuring each of the local regiments in the Army, Navy and RAF, along with family members, MPs and representatives of several local
organisations, started on Church Street and took a route via Market Street, Union Street and North Street to its final destination.
The parade was led by the St Andrews City Pipe Band.
Representatives from each regiment and the local organisations present then laid wreaths around the St Andrews War Memorial. They were joined by pupils from Madras College and St Leonards School.
Around 200 people joined the parade in walking through the streets of St Andrews, and most stayed to observe the formal part of the event at the memorial.
This was the first time that I had attended the parade, and it was an impactful event to walk through the ancient streets of St Andrews and pay respects to those who died to keep us free from the terrors of the enemy.
St Andrews also took part in Danny Boyle’s nationwide event – PAGES OF THE SEA – a first of its kind, national beach sculpture event staged at numerous beaches across the UK.
Volunteers were on West Sands at sunrise to begin sculpting the image of suffragette Dr Elsie Inglis into the sand.
Then from 12pm hundreds of members of the public congregated on the beach to see it and carve their own sculptures of a Tommy into the beach,
As the tide came in it washed away the image of Elsie Inglis, as a final goodbye to a woman who played her part in the war effort.
Elsie Inglis was an avowed suffragist and ally of campaigner Millicent Fawcett, who combined her medical background with a yearning for social justice. Born in Naini, India, she came to Scotland with her parents when still young. Inglis trained as a surgeon in Edinburgh and Glasgow, at first seeking to improve facilities and healthcare for women. In 1901, she founded a maternity hospital for the poor in Edinburgh – The Hospice – staffed only by women.
At the outbreak of war, she was instrumental in setting up the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service Committee, a body funded by the suffrage movement to provide all-female care.
Rebuffed by Great Britain’s War Office, which told her to “go home and sit still”, Inglis’s help was accepted by the French, who sent her unit first to Serbia, where she was instrumental in improving hygiene to reduce epidemics such as typhus. Despite being captured and repatriated in 1915, Inglis then went to work in Russia before she was diagnosed with a terminal illness and returned to Britain in November 1917. She passed away the day after she arrived home.
A specially commissioned poem by Carol Ann Duffy was made available for the public to read during the event.
