A SMALL remembrance service in Helensburgh to mark the 75th anniversary of VJ Day has been described as "enormously important" by those who took part.
Bans on large-scale gathering meant there was no advance publicity for the low-key commemoration held at the Cenotaph in Hermitage Park.
The surrender of Japan in August 1945, three months after the Allies’ victory in Europe, marked the end of all fighting in the Second World War.
The service was attended by Conservative MSP, Helensburgh resident and Army veteran Maurice Corry, Lieutenant Commander Garth Atkinson RN, representing the serving armed forces, and Fiona Baker, chair of the Friends of Hermitage Park, representing the civilian community.
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The pipes were played by 15-year-old Mark Morrison, a pupil at the Vale of Leven Academy, who was playing at his first service of remembrance.
The commemoration party entered the park’s memorial garden to the sound of Glengarry’s Lament on the pipes, and formed up facing the memorial before Mr Corry read the famous Kohima Epitaph:
When you go home, tell them of us, and say:
‘For your tomorrow, We gave our today’
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Two minutes of silence followed before Mark played ‘When the Battle’s O’er’ and Lt Cdr Garth Atkinson read the famous exhortation from Robert Laurence Binyon’s 1914 poem, ‘For The Fallen’:
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them.
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Mr Corry then laid a wreath as Mark played ‘Highland Laddie’ before the party saluted the memorial and marched out to the strains of ‘Dark Island’.
Mr Corry said afterwards: “The war in the Far East was brutal, with millions of casualties, and the ultimate sacrifice was made by hundreds of thousands of British and Allied forces, not to mention the suffering of those held in Japanese Prisoner of War and labour camps.
“It was enormously important that while a large gathering is impossible under the current circumstances, we were able to hold a small ceremony today on behalf of the people of Helensburgh, to honour and remember those who fought and died for our freedom.”
Ms Baker added: “Under the current circumstances I am glad we were able to still hold a small and very moving ceremony to honour the war dead.
“Mark Morrison played beautifully at his first remembrance service and we are very grateful to him for being the piper.”
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Throughout the day, many local people came to pay their respects, and local man and piper Colin Lawrie had played ‘Heroes of Kohima’ at the Cenotaph earlier in the day.
Colin’s father Ian Lawrie was the Remembrance Day piper in Helensburgh during the 1950s and 1960s and Colin himself fulfilled the role between 1962-1968 before moving away for the district for many years, only returning home a couple of years ago.
An individual remembrance was also left at the memorial in memory of Captain Thomas Somerville Burnet, who died on Malaya on January 18, 1942, aged 32, and is buried in Kranji Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Singapore.
Captain Burnet served with the Royal Engineers, and was attached to the 13th Field Company of Queen Victoria’s Own Madras Miners and Sappers.
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