SOMETIMES the individual human utterance can speak louder than the voices of many.

So it has proved in a year which has seen the people of Scotland pause to remember the sacrifices of the men who marched off to war 100 years ago.

Amidst the pomp and grandeur of national events it has been heart-warming and inspiring to see the ways in which the act of remembrance has percolated down to local communities.

Given the global nature of the conflict it is only natural that there have been grand occasions and services with pipes and drums and veterans marching in serried ranks just as their forefathers did in 1914. Few people will ever forget the solemnity of the Commonwealth Service in Glasgow Cathedral to commemorate the moment when the lights went out in Europe after Britain's declaration of war on August 4, 1914. And there will be equally powerful memories from the Drumhead Service on the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle where thousands gathered from all over Scotland a few days later to help recreate one of the many military services which took place throughout the conflict.

Both were deeply spiritual occasions and rightly so, but the personal and the private still intruded, again rightly so. At Glasgow Cathedral, in the presence of HRH The Duke of Rothesay and Commonwealth leaders, the tone was set by the Rev Dr Laurence Whitley who reminded ­everyone that they were present to ­remember the day the world changed for ever.

Those were wise words but equally luminous was the address given by Kirsten Fell, a 16-year old pupil at Dunbar Grammar School as she recalled a visit to the Poelkapelle Cemetery in Belgium and the lasting effect of standing beside the grave of an unknown soldier. "From then on," she told the congregation, "my outlook on life has never been the same."

At the end of October, on a rain-swept night in Stornoway, I had the privilege of opening the Gairm nan Gaidheal ("Call of the Gael") exhibition which commemorates the service of the Gaelic-speaking communities of the Western Isles during the First World War. Put together by the unfailingly excellent Proiseact nan Ealan and mounted in the An Lanntair arts centre, it is a moving testament, for here is gathered together the race memory of a people who suffered more than most during the conflict.

Not only did their menfolk join up in great numbers but they had to face the unimaginable horror of the loss of the Admiralty Yacht Iolaire, which sank within reach of Stornoway harbour in the early hours of New Year's Day 1919, drowning 205 local men returning home from the war.

Worse still, they were within reach of their homes and loved ones at a time of year when families gather to bring in the new year. It is right and proper, therefore, that the jewel in the exhibition's crown is a scale model of the doomed Iolaire, lovingly constructed by John Campbell of Portvoller.

On the other side of the country, also in a seafaring community, a similar exhibition opened in North Berwick's Coastal Communities Museum in June.

Once again, the accent was on community and once again the emphasis was on telling the story of the war through the experiences of those who lived through that torrid period.

Many never came back, such as poet Walter Scott Stuart Lyon, who was one of three out of four brothers from the same family killed on active service. However, the exhibition is not just about the pity of war. There are evocative recreations of life on the home front while recorded reminiscences allow a younger generation to eavesdrop on the lives lived by their great-grandparents.

Kirriemuir's excellent Gateway To The Glens Museum has done something similar for the "wee red town", which saw so many of its young men leave the Braes of Angus to fight far away from home.

Under the title Kirrie's Fallen Men, the exhibition includes photographs, letters and artefacts including an unusual telegram from Buckingham Palace in 1914 addressed to the current Earl of Airlie's mother Lady Bridget Coke warning her that war was imminent.

To get a clearer idea of what the exhibition's title means to the people of Kirriemuir, leave the museum and head north across the square through the ancient thoroughfare of the Roods towards Northmuir.

Instead of passing by the track towards the top of Kirriemuir Hill, follow it until you reach the cemetery. Here stands the town's war memorial, a fine figure of a kilted Black Watch soldier looking out towards Strathmore, the great vale that runs westwards towards Perth bounded by the Sidlaws to the south and the Grampian foothills to the north. He guards a number of gravestones which tell the story of the war in microcosm.

Nearby is the marker for Chae Melvin, a winner of the Victoria Cross, who served with 2nd Black Watch at Istabulat in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and returned to Kirriemuir, dying in 1941 aged 56.

Behind stands a stone to a family which lost all three of their sons fighting in France and Flanders.

Closer examination reveals that the father and mother survived into old age, living out their lives alone. It is a grim reminder that for some families the war never ended.

Trevor Royle is the editor of Isn't All This Bloody?: Scottish Writing From The First World War (Birlinn). He is a member of the Scottish Government's Advisory Panel for the Commemoration of World War I