Hansard

I, too, congratulate Meghan Gallacher on getting this important subject debated in Holyrood, and I wish her well on her maternity leave.

I also commend the work that communities, volunteers, the British Legion, churches and councils across Argyll and Bute and the rest of Scotland do to keep war memorials in the heart of their communities in such wonderful condition. In St Andrews, as a brownie and as a girl guide, I took part in many remembrance day services in Holy Trinity church—the minute’s silence, the parade to the war memorial and the wreath laying. I had been told about the wars and the sacrifice, but it was not until Easter 1982, when a family holiday to the battlefields of northern France coincided with the Falklands war, that remembrance day became much more meaningful.

I knew that six Minto cousins fought in world war one and that three survived—one of whom was my great uncle Rab, who, on his return, studied for the ministry. Of the cousins who did not come home, two are buried in different cemeteries in Poperinghe. One was from East Lothian and one was from Australia. They are closer together in death than they were in life. I was able to pay my respects to those two men when I attended commemorations on the 100-year anniversary of world war one in 2017 in Ypres and Tyne Cot. Families in those places joined together in remembrance of, as the motion says,

“the young men and women who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for their countries, so that everyone today, irrespective of their background, can equally enjoy freedom from tyranny and oppression.”

Like communities across Scotland and Argyll and Bute, Islay has its war memorials and Commonwealth War Commission graveyards—memorials in remembrance of locals who were lost and sailors who were washed up on its shores. One grave is of an American soldier named Roy Muncaster. In February 1919, when the troop ship Tuscania was torpedoed in the north channel between Islay and Ireland, almost 200 men were lost, with many being swept on to Islay. Those who did not survive were buried there. After the war, those American soldiers were repatriated to their communities or to Arlington cemetery or were taken to Brookwood cemetery, south of London—all except for Roy Muncaster. His family wanted him to remain where he had been laid to rest. They knew that he would be looked after by the Islay folk, and he is. The Forest Ranger Service, which Roy had worked for in the United States, named a mountain in his memory in the Olympia national park—memorials take different forms.

Islay’s war memorials commemorate the names of the fallen in world war two and other conflicts. In 2018, support from the Scottish Government allowed us to clean the war memorials and keep them in great form. In small communities, the memorials are personal. The surnames etched into the stone are still on the school rolls today—they are not simply names; they are family members who are recognised, remembered and respected. The stories of the battles, in the trenches or on the seas, are handed down, retold and learned about in school.

I struggle to understand why anyone would vandalise or desecrate a war memorial or a gravestone. Do we not do enough to ensure that the stories behind the names are told? The punishment should fit the crime, and I welcome that.

The history behind our war memorials needs to be handed down the generations—lest we forget. Debates such as this one, including the debate last week on 40 years since the Falklands war, led by my colleague Graeme Dey, are so important because they raise awareness.

Our war memorials belong to our communities. They represent the collective memories and histories of our communities. As others have said, they are beyond politics. They do not judge wars as just or unjust; they simply, but starkly, remind us of the high prices that communities pay when countries go to war, and they honour those of our own folk who made the ultimate sacrifice. They are too important to fall prey to thoughtless and ignorant vandalism.