11.11.11

It's a battered and old photograph, but it's one of my most precious. This is my grandfather Robert Laing Cowper in his uniform of the Black Watch. He went off to war, fighting in the Third Battle of Ypres. He was lucky, he came home, but his brother Alexander, died in the battle at Passchendaele. It's difficult to imagine that this young man is my gentle old grandfather (papa). My mum told me that he didn't talk of anything that happend in the war, only of the mud and the lice that lived on him and the folds of his kilt and having to be de-loused on return home.

So, the photo for today, 11.11.11, is for me remembering my papa, who fought and returned from WW1, and the poppy is for remembering all the men and women who fought and died since then - never forgotten. . . . ..