The Islay War Memorial in Port Ellen
I recently attended a planning session for a heritage society and, as I was listening to the various members of the group, a thought came to me. Maybe it is harder for people who are focused on history to plan our way into the future. We're used to looking at the cause of events knowing what the outcome will be, not trying to figure out what will probably happen if we take certain actions.
No one really knows what the results of their actions will be. They can hope and plan what they are going to do based on what has previously happened and by studying results of what others have tried, but outcomes can go in unforeseen directions. That knowledge is especially sobering when fighting is involved. As I'm gathering veterans from my family for the 2023 Veterans Book for the BC Genealogical Society, it's strange to think that those people signed up with no idea of what the end result would be. Even if their side won, there was nothing to say that they'd be around to see it. All of those men and women had no idea of the outcome of their service when they signed up.
It was a risky business, but happily most veterans in my family tree lived through the experience. Of the ones I've found so far, only Corporal John Hunter, who fought in WWI, didn't come back alive as evidenced by the war memorial in Port Ellen, Islay, Scotland. I'm still finding the veterans in my tree and adding collateral relatives as well so that statistic might change. I can't foresee the outcome of my search into the past, another way in which both the future and history are unpredictable.
A close up of some of the names on the Islay War Memorial
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