As the last D-Day veterans leave us, remembrance must become our responsibility
The death of Charlie Horne at 100 is a reminder that the generation who fought in the Second World War will soon be gone. Keeping their memory alive now falls to the rest of us.
Poppy wreaths laid at a war memorial in the Scottish Borders. · Photograph: Walter Baxter (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Charlie Horne served on a minesweeper off Omaha Beach in June 1944. He died a week before Remembrance Sunday, aged 100 – one of the last Scots who could say, from their own experience, what D-Day was like.
The First Minister paid tribute to him before laying a wreath at the Stone of Remembrance in Edinburgh. It was a fitting gesture. But it also marked something we will all have to face soon: a Remembrance Sunday with no one left who stood on those beaches.
A changing kind of remembrance
For decades, the two-minute silence has been anchored by the presence of veterans themselves – men and women in their medals, marching past the Cenotaph in George Square or standing in the rain at village memorials across Scotland. Their being there made the meaning of the day obvious.
As that generation passes, remembrance risks becoming ritual without memory. That would be a loss not only to the families of those who served, but to all of us.
Stories, not just names
The answer is not to make Remembrance Sunday bigger or louder. It is to make it more personal. Every war memorial in Scotland lists names. Behind each one is a story – a shipyard worker from Govan, a farmhand from the Borders, a teenager from Maryhill.
Communities are already showing how. In Maryhill this week, a new memorial was unveiled to four Victoria Cross recipients whose names were once carried by the Wyndford tower blocks. It is the kind of local, rooted act of remembering that will matter more and more.
Remembering today's veterans too
Remembrance is not only about the past. Scotland is home to tens of thousands of veterans of more recent conflicts, from Northern Ireland and the Falklands to Iraq and Afghanistan. Many still need practical help with housing, health and work – which is why investment in services such as Glasgow's veterans' drop-in centre matters.
Passing it on
Charlie Horne and his comrades carried their memories for 80 years. The least we can do is carry them for the next 80 – in classrooms, in families, and in the quiet moments on November 11 when the country stops and remembers.