The Going Down of the Sun: The Great War and a Rural Lewis Community

Acair, 2014. 413 pages. Hardback.

Over the past 100 years much has been written about the cocktail of circumstances that led to the Great War, the chaos and confusion of its battles, and - closer to home - that cruel conclusion on the Beasts of Holm on New Year's morning 1919 when over 200 island sailors returning home from the Great War perished in the Iolaire disaster.  Some 900 men and several women from the coastal villiages between Skirgersta and Ballantrushal were on active service during the war years.  They are all remembered here with honour and some who survived the war gave precious accounts of their experiences to Comunn Eachdraidh Nis back in the 1970s.  This book is the story of that generation of our people caught up in a distant war in which mustard gas and machine guns, zeppelins and submarines, torpedoes and tanks, artillery shells and aeroplanes were the instruments of death in a new and terrible age.