On Monday the 11th of November 2013 Sandbank Primary School’s senior pupils in mainstream and Gaelic held an Armistice Service attended by the junior pupils, pre-five unit and staff. The older children had all walked down to the War Memorial at Lazaretto Point the previous week and researched the history behind it. They discovered plaques from both the 1st and 2nd World Wars detailing the names and roles of local men who lost their lives in conflict.

They found out about the role of the Holy Loch as a submarine base and read the names of submarines lost at sea and a reference to the Cockleshell Heroes who sailed on their mission from here. Both classes used this information to write their own act of remembrance, beginning with an explanation of the significance of the date chosen and the poppy as a symbol of remembrance. Some pupils had worked at home to produce a poignant and thought-provoking powerpoint of war grave images, which they played at the introduction to the minute of silence. The observation of silence began with a reading of the poem “In Flanders Field” as the powerpoint changed to a scene of falling poppies and ended as a GM 5 pupil played a retreat march on the chanter. P6/7 then led a tribute to the fallen from the second world war using the names on the war memorial. In addition to writing and leading the service, the senior classes demonstrated great teamwork as some of them worked the projector for the powerpoint, gave out the hymn books and set the CD player for the chosen hymn “Make me a channel of your peace”. Others with musical talents played the entrance music “Amazing Grace”, set the scene with “Ode to Joy” and finished with “Highland Cathedral” for the school to exit the hall. The younger pupils were a very attentive and respectful audience and Mrs Clarke, our headteacher, later described the service as “very moving”. Our act of remembrance did not end there for our senior pupils as they had a range of visitors from the local community each day for the rest of the week, with very different experiences of WW2; from a schoolboy in Sandbank to another brought up in Germany; from a Glasgow student during the Clydebank blitz to a WREN.