University remembers the fallen
Published: 11 November 2013
Staff and students gathered in the University Chapel this morning (Monday 11 November) to pay their respects in a simple Act of Remembrance. Next year sees the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War.
A simple Act of Remembrance was held in the University Chapel this morning (Monday 11 November) to mark Armistice Day.
As the great bell in the University Tower struck eleven o'clock, representatives of the four principal student bodies SRC, GUSA, GUU and QMU placed a wreath close to the memorial tablets for both the Great War and the Second World War, on behalf of the students of today.
University Chaplain, Stuart MacQuarrie, spoke the words from Laurence Binyon's 'For the Fallen':
"They shall grow not 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."
Binyon wrote the poem in 1914, after being moved by the scale of the casuallties even in the early stages of the war. Later, despite being too old for active servicce, he volunteered to work on the Western Front as a hospital orderly, caring for the wounded.
As the simple Act of Remembrance came to an end, piper Gavin Tulloch, the Glasgow University Union President, played the lament Flowers of the Forest.
Next year sees the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. You can find out more about the University Chapel's war memorial here:
http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/ww1-intro/
First published: 11 November 2013
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