THE COVENANTER
Pattison Major Lisle and Dorothy or are inscribed on war memorials, or who
Pettit Captain Clff to this day bear the scars of war. Not to
Rodger Major Bill and Sheena remember would also diminish us. Let me
Selkirk of Douglas Lord James and Susie illustrate what I mean.
Sixsmith Major Mike and Jo
Tedford Lieutenant Colonel Ian and Lindy Shostakovich, the Russian composer who
Weir Captain John and Nessa died in 1975, describes in his memoirs the
Williams Anne reign of terror which Stalin unleashed in
Worthington-Wilmer Major Hugh and Russia in the 1920s and 1930s. Hundreds
Philippa and hundreds of thousands of people were
arrested and executed or sent to labour
Regimental Gathering
camps in Siberia, never to return, and those
who were snatched from their homes by the
KGB in the middle of the night, or arrested
Following the annual church service at 10am
at work, or picked up off the street, were
in the Douglas Valley Church, St Brides there
not remembered. You didn’t ask what had
will be an all ranks gathering.
happened to them. You didn’t even let on
that you knew them. If you did so, you also
would fall under suspicion, and it wouldn’t
Cameronian Sunday
be long before you too were taken away.
St. Bride’s, Douglas
In his memoirs, Shostakovich pays tribute
11 May 2008, 10.00 a.m.
to one of his teachers at the Moscow
Conservatoire called Zhilayev who
The Reverend David Easton
encouraged him as a young composer.
He often went to his house to show him
Text – During his lifetime Absalom had taken
his latest work. In the front room hung
a pillar and erected it in the King’s Valley as a
a picture of a famous army general called
monument to himself, for he thought, “I have no
Tukhachevsky who after the First World War
son to carry on the memory of my name.” He
became a national hero. But for Stalin, he
named the pillar after himself, and it is called
had grown too big for his boots. He feared
Absalom’s Monument to this day.
him as a rival and ordered his execution on
2 Samuel 18.18
the trumped up charge that he had worked
for the Germans as a spy.
Today is a day when we remember. We
remember the long and proud history of
Shostakovich writes:
the Cameronians both in war and peace
After the announcement that Tukhachevsky
– a history which stretches from the
had been shot as a traitor to the homeland,
raising of the regiment on 14 May 1689
Zhilayev did not take the picture down. I
to its disbandment on 14th May 1968.
don’t know if I can explain how heroic a
We remember the political and religious
deed that was. How did people behave
convictions of those who first formed the
then? As soon as the next poor soul was
regiment; we remember the wars in which
declared an enemy of the people, everyone
it fought across the centuries; we remember
destroyed in panic everything connected
acts of heroism in far flung battlefields;
with that person. If the enemy of the people
we remember those who paid the price of
wrote books, they threw away his books; if
such courage and gave their lives for their
they had letters from him, they burned the
country; we remember the disbandment
letters. The mind cannot grasp the number of
of the regiment on a cold and wet day 40
letters and papers burned in that period, no
years ago; and we remember the annual
war could ever clean out domestic archives
commemorations at Douglas which have
like that. And naturally, photographs flew
kept the spirit of the regiment alive and
into the flames first, because if someone
have maintained a sense of continuing
informed the authorities that you had a
belonging.
picture of the enemy of the people, it meant
certain death.
We remember, because it would be wrong to
Shostakovich goes on to say:
forget. Not to remember would not only be
Zhilayev wasn’t afraid. When they came
a gross betrayal of those whose names are
for him, Tukhachevsky’s prominently hung
recorded in the annals of the Cameronians,
portrait amazed even the executioners.
20
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