The Remembrance Garden is open in Princes Street Gardens, serried rows of small crosses and poppies lined up in silent regiments around the enormous pillars of the Scott Monument. I took a few photographs last weekend as it was just opening ahead of the Remembrance Sunday weekend this weekend, volunteers from Poppy Scotland were still hammering a few more of the small crosses into the ground:

The smaller crosses are made for people to leave personal messages on – families of the fallen, old comrades and friends, some from conflicts long gone, a relative fallen at Arnhem in WWII, but not forgotten. There is a special section this year for more recent conflicts such as those lost in the Afghanistan campaign, bearing photographs of the fallen:

And there was one which had the simplest but most touching, hearbtreaking message that brought tears to my eyes:

A reminder, if any ever was needed that behind Big Historical Events, behind the bloody-handed politicians who make the decisions but never risk their life or that of their own, always someone else’s son or daughter or husband or wife, behind all the media pundits and their endless analysis filling the 24-hour rolling news discussions, behind all of that, individuals, ordinary people, taken from those who loved them, leaving them behind with a hole in their lives, in their hearts, a grievous wound that they will carry all the rest of their days, those left behind as wounded in their own way as any harmed on a battlefield. Again we can only wonder when the human race will learn.