Why? (Rally in General)

Name: MaryanneH

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Product:	Rally in General
Date:	11/08/04 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: It isn't over

Gloucester to Glencoe is a pretty long drive, try it, you?ll see what I mean. But on the way up to our Scottish holiday (before we?d spent too much money and couldn?t afford an overnight hotel) we decided to break journey. So picking a ?just over the border? spot at random, we chose Lockerbie.

Now I haven?t requested a new topic for this as it is more of a review of my personal feelings of my visit and is rather an odd thing to write a review on. Now, Lockerbie was chosen solely on its geographic position on the M74, and had it not been for the events of December 21st 1988 I probably wouldn?t have even heard of it. I didn?t really consider doing anything more than getting a bag of chips and going to bed, but when we mentioned to friends and family where we were stopping the reaction was very odd, from that?s a bit risky isn?t it, to a very sarcastic ?nice?. Now I know all these reactions were just in jest, but still were very unnecessary.

Fortunately for us all the traffic was going South (Devon and Cornwall must have been packed) so we reached Lockerbie somewhat earlier than planned and popped into the village for lunch, it is a very sleepy little village, not much there, not much going on but very well kept and clean and has a beautifully well kept park, way better than we have around here, immaculate flower borders and loads of space for kids to play and clean, respectable public toilets. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was expecting some sort of monument to the horrendous act of terrorism, but didn?t really think any more of it.

So we were back in the car on our way to the hotel, got to be said the travel inn at J16 of the M74 has the best view ever, you could pay hundreds of pounds for a top class hotel and not get a view like that and it is a very quiet stretch of motorway, with a gorgeous lake and views of Scottish h
ills behind I was impressed. Anyway, that aside, we passed a sign to the cemetery and decided to pop up just to see if there was a memorial there, just to pay our respects and leave. On arrival there was a good sized car park and I was a little surprised to see a visitors centre, which we didn?t go into straight away almost out of embarrassment that we had come to somewhere with an unhealthy form of morbid curiosity. So with strict warnings to the kids to show respect we entered the cemetery, it had a sign towards a garden of remembrance, which I thought would simply be the garden for people who had chosen cremation but it seemed to be the logical way to go, so off we went.

Now the one thing that did strike me was how tidy it was, don?t get me wrong, English cemeteries are not messy but they are restricted for space, this was immaculate, everything in very neat rows with plenty of walking space in between, which you certainly don?t get in the UK, here they are all higgledy piggledy and very difficult to walk between without standing on someone else.

I wasn?t really sure what to expect, whether anything would be there or not, I had absolutely no preconceptions but to my surprise we ended up staying a good hour. There was a beautiful garden of remembrance to the 270 victims of the Pan am air craft that simply dropped out of the sky, killing 11 of the townspeople of Lockerbie took out 2 houses completely and damaged many more. The garden is laid out to resemble an aircraft, it was August so plenty of really beautiful colours in the flowerbeds and many, many, so many plaques from people locally and in the states. There is a central gangway with plaques on, and a path down either side with the flower beds resembling the wings, all leading up to a huge granite memorial naming all of the victims. It was immaculate and very moving, I don?t remember any of the inscriptions, but
to be honest I don?t have to, the feelings I had facing the reality will always stay with me, a mixture of grief for people I have never met, but deserved none of what they got and anger again against people I don?t know and to be honest, don?t understand.

What was most moving, was the reaction of my children, we had explained to them what had happened, and even though they are young (7 and 5) we had made no attempt to hide or soften the events of September 11th from them, which is the major event that they remember. I just expected them to get bored, but they asked so many questions, many that I can never hope to answer, and my little one was in tears that anyone could do something so mindless; my eyes were not exactly dry.

Having seen the beauty and serenity of the memorial I wanted to make a donation towards the upkeep, so we then went into the visitors centre. Whilst the centre did have a very large proportion devoted to the disaster, it also tells the story of Lockerbie, but understandably the board that everyone wanted to read was the details of the crash. Telling how the townspeople coped, even having to use the Ice rink as a temporary mortuary, but for me the most poignant of all was a book of remembrance with a page devoted to each victim, all 270 of them, which seat number they were allocated to and where they were able, a profile of them, it was beautifully bound and laminated. There was a plaque that was presented by President Clinton to the people of the town and press photographs of the time.

There is another memorial in the town that we did not visit, but is equally as tasteful and sold as postcards in the visitors centre. It is an amazing stained glass window, with intertwined flags of nations, united in grief.

The drive back to the hotel was very quiet.

I have recently been reading the book of Glencoe by John &
#80;rebbles, there is a quote in there relating to the massacre but is equally as relevant to Lockerbie.

?There is no melancholy here, but what we bring?

There is no melancholy in Lockerby, it is a lovely sleepy little town,that certainly did not deserve what it got, but remembers it with respect and tasteful dignity.

May this war of terror soon be forever over.

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