This is the weekend for remembering. A time for the country to stop and recall those who sacrificed their lives in the fields of France, in the deserts of Africa on the hills of the Falklands. 

We are good at taking a few moments at cenotaphs and war memorials up and down the country to recall the lives lost. The poet Laurence Binyon’s words are now part of national ritual: “At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.”

It is more troubling to note that more than 100 years on from the end of the “war to end all wars”, wars are still raging in Europe and in the Middle East, that men, women and children are still dying, that politicians and dictators are still willing to sacrifice the lives of others to their own ends. General Wolfe’s words on Highland soldiers before the Battle of Quebec in 1759, “No great mischief if they fall”, would not sound out of place in Russia today.

Which is why Scotland’s war memorials are so important; as a reminder of  who, and what, was lost and as a plea for us not to keep making the same mistakes.

 

The Scottish National War Memorial, Edinburgh Castle

In 1927, just under a decade after the end of the First World War, some 200 Scottish craftsmen and artists, under the purview of architect Sir Robert Lorimer created this hall of honour and shrine to the war dead in Crown Square within Edinburgh Castle. It came in the face of much local criticism and hostility from those who felt the location was inappropriate. 

Now it is hard to imagine it anywhere else. The memorial is perhaps most notable for the frieze of Scottish soldiers which was the work of sculptor Gertrude Alice Meredith Williams and her husband Morris Meredith Williams.

The names of the dead are on permanent display in books that contain the names of nearly 135,000 Scottish casualties in the First World War, as well as more than 50,000 of those lost in the Second World War and in campaigns since including Korea, the Falklands, Northern Ireland and the Gulf War. 

 

The Scottish Korean War Memorial, Witchcraigs, near Torphichen

In the hills above Linlithgow, close to the Cairnpapple Hill, itself a neolithic monument, there is a Korean-style pagoda located in an arboretum of Korean firs and native Scottish trees. It is the UK’s only memorial dedicated to the British soldiers, more than 1100 of them, killed in the Korean War at the start of the 1950s, the “forgotten war” as it is often called, most notably by those who fought in it. 

The monument sits in an out-of-the-way location in the hills above the Forth valley which gives it a real sense of peace and tranquillity.

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Balmaclellan Crimean War Memorial, Dumfries and Galloway

One of the more modest memorials in this list, but one of the most important. It is believed that the upright stone commemorating the five men from the village killed in the Crimean War in the 1850s is the oldest war memorial in Scotland. The inscription reads: “ERECTED By the Inhabitants of Balmaclellan IN MEMORY OF the valour and devotedness of Five Soldiers, Natives of the Parish, During the war with Russia”. A sixth local John Henry Upton Spalding, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy who died at Sebastopol, is commemorated on his family’s tomb nearby. 

 

Commando Memorial, Spean Bridge

The best thing one can say about this large, 17ft-high three-figured sculpture designed by Scott Sutherland and unveiled in 1952 is that it does not look out of place in its expansive surroundings. Just outside the village of Spean Bridge, it sits high in the landscape surrounded by the Mamore Mountains, looking towards the imposing presence of Ben Nevis itself. This landscape is the one where many of the commandos who fought and died in the Second World War trained.

 

Glasgow Cenotaph, Glasgow

Even in the expanse of Glasgow’s George Square it’s impossible to ignore the city’s war memorial. The work of Glaswegian architect John James Burnet, the grey granite obelisk sits in front of the City Chambers guarded by stone lions designed by Ernest Gillick. It was unveiled by Field Marshal Douglas Haig in May 1924. This year marks the cenotaph’s centenary.

(Image: The Commando Monument)

Nurses’ Memorial, Edinburgh

Not all war memorials try to overpower you into solemnity. This modest plaque, unveiled in 2015 in Edinburgh’s Central Library, is a memorial to the 500-plus British, Irish and Dominion Force nurses who lost their lives during the First World War. A reminder that war does not only claim the lives of soldiers. 

 

Alloa War Memorial, Clackmannanshire

Nearly every city, town and village in Scotland will have its own memorial to local soldiers who lost their lives in conflict. Let Alloa’s stand in for all of them, if only for Charles d’Orville Pilkington Jackson’s fine, recently refurbished, bronze sculpture of Saint Margaret standing above a group of three soldiers half-buried in mud. Born in Cornwall but raised in Musselburgh, Pilkington Jackson’s most famous work is his depiction of Robert the Bruce not so very far away from Alloa, at Bannockburn. 

 

Spanish Civil War Memorial, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh

Among the more than 30,000 men from around the world who volunteered to join the International Brigade to help Republican forces in Spain fight against General Franco’s Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War there were 549 Scots. Located in the east end of the Princes Street Gardens, this stone slab with an inscription panel commemorates those men from Lothian and Fife who volunteered.

(Image: The American Monument)

The American Monument, Islay

In February 1918 the Tuscania, an American troopship sailing from New Jersey to Liverpool, was torpedoed by a German submarine in the North Channel. More than 200 soldiers lost their lives in the attack, many of them washing up on the shore of Islay. Later that year in October a collision between the HMS Kashmir and the troopship HMS Otranto led to the deaths of some 358 American soldiers and nearly 100 Royal Navy personnel. 

Two years later, the American Red Cross erected the American Monument high on a clifftop on the Mull of Oa above the sea. The lighthouse design was the work of Robert Walker. 

 

The Black Watch Monument, Dundee

There is no shortage of monuments to the Scottish regiment, physical markers of the Black Watch’s long, storied history. The Dundee memorial, dedicated to the memory of men of the 4th and 5th Dundee and Angus Battalions of the Black Watch who died in the Second World War, is a more modest thing than the 19th-century memorial to be found in Aberfeldy. But this sculpture, another example of the work of Scott Sutherland, is worth noting for its simple humanity. Originally unveiled by the Queen Mother in 1959, the memorial was relocated in 1985 to Powrie Brae where it sits near the A90.