The following is an edited account of an article published in the Stornoway Gazette on 10/11/11 and written by Donald S. Murray about someone who lived in his village of South Dell, six miles from the northernmost point on the Isle of Lewis, when the author was a child.
“…As a young boy, I wasn’t aware of a great deal of the truth about Iain Morrison’s life. I didn’t know…how three of his brothers had lost their lives in the First World war – Alex, Angus and Finlay being killed in various locations at sea during that global conflict… Nor was I conscious of how the boys’ father, Norman, had reacted to this loss. Apparently he spent much of his time crying over their absence, comparing himself to other men who had sent their sons to the conflict and seen them all arrive home safely….As the sole survivor…..Iain was unfit for croftwork: these rages… afflicted him each morning…I’d see him ….swiping the air with his walking stick and cursing all and sundry that lay around him.”
The source below is from an account by Hector MacIver about his childhood in the village of Shawbost on the Isle of Lewis and quoted in “When I Heard the Bell – the Loss of the Iolaire” by John MacLeod.
“One word that recurred most frequently in the entire vocabulary of the village was cogagh , the Gaelic word for war. And as surely as I had come to accept war as an inevitable and integral part of Lewis life – with its black meal, wartime rations, margarine, contaminated sugar, occasional visits from the Red Cross – I had come to accept the protracted mourning, the three-day wakes that the village custom insisted whenever a fresh casualty was announced amongst the menfolk of the village….When a wake was held for a boy killed in action, I have gone into the house and seen twenty girls dressed in black and the young men also…”
MacIver also talks about his feelings on hearing of the Armistice.
“….It was at that very moment….that it occurred to me seriously for the first time that my brother Neil would never return. Until then I had not accepted the fact that he had been killed at the Somme, even though we had a wake for him two years before….Neil had meant to study for the ministry. But the war came and, claiming he was older than he actually was, he volunteered to join the Seaforth Highlanders. He was too young for enlistment – but not too young to die.”
Vera Brittain lost her brother Edward, two close friends and her fiancé, Roland Leighton during the Great War. She herself served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse for much of the war. She wrote the following in her diary on December 23rd, 1916. (From P336, “Chronicle of Youth- Vera Brittain’s War Diary, Ed. Alan Bishop – NOT a Scottish source, but illustrative of the impact of losses.)
“ The anniversary of Roland’s death – and for me, farewell to the best thing in my life….It is absurd to say that time makes one forget; I miss Him as much now as I ever did. One recovers from the shock, just as one would gradually get used to managing with one’s left hand if one has lost one’s right, but one never gets over the loss, for one is never the same after it. I have got used to facing the long empty years ahead of me if I survive the war, but I have always before me the realisation of how empty they are and will be, since He will never be there again.”