LIGHTING Of Lyle Hill Beacon Among Increased Inverclyde Remembrance Ceremonies

REMEMBRANCE commemoration across Inverclyde this November will include extra events — including lighting the Lyle Hill beacon.

Inverclyde Council will be taking part in the national Battle’s Over commemorations on Sunday 11 November, starting at dawn with a piper at the Free French Memorial on Lyle Hill.

Ceremonies and wreath-laying will take place throughout the day. In the evening — 6.40pm — Lyle Hill will be the focus again as Inverclyde welcomes the French consul to remember the Free French navy stationed in Greenock during the Second World War. As the last post is played by a bugler, the beacon at Lyle Hill will be lit joining beacons across the UK, while church bells across the area ring out.

Inverclyde councillors have agreed to support the ‘There but not There’ campaign by purchasing and installing seven ‘Tommies’. The Tommies, specially-designed sculptures depicting the outline of soldiers, will be placed in each of the towns and villages of Inverclyde at or close to existing war memorials.

Two initiatives will take place locally to directly support Poppy Scotland with the Ginger the Horse statue in Cathcart Street wearing a large poppy in the lead up to Remembrance Sunday and the Lyle Hill Cross of Lorraine memorial lit red. It is also proposed that the council makes use of local projection equipment to screen footage supplied by Poppy Scotland on to the wall space at Cowan’s Corner in Greenock in the lead up to Remembrance Sunday.

Councillor Stephen McCabe, leader of the council and chair of the policy and resources committee, said: “This year marks a significant occasion as we remember 100 years since the guns fell silent in the First World War. The campaign ‘There but not There’ provides a haunting and moving memorial to the fallen soldiers of that war in which so many lives were lost.

“It is right that every community in Inverclyde gets the chance to be involved in this campaign and to remember the sacrifices made then and today by our armed services.”

Inverclyde’s veterans’ champion, Councillor Gerry Dorrian, said: “Inverclyde and our towns and villages have long associations with the armed services. The installation of the Tommies in every town and village across Inverclyde will connect all of Inverclyde’s communities together to remember.”