The Highlanders who fell at Festubert, to be remembered on Skye

Nearly 20,000 men were slaughtered in one of the earliest and bloodiest of the engagements of First World War. From the village of Portree alone, 26 men lost their lives in the engagement, 13 in one day. The rest of Skye suffered as well.

The celebrated Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean's poem "The Battle of Festubert May 1915" recalls the island's pupils being sent home from Portree school to grief stricken parents who had just received the terrible news from Festubert.

"Doors opened and closed

Quietly in many a house,

And the children going home

To weeping or to silence."

Meanwhile further east at least 60 men from Kingussie in Badenoch were killed in the Great War, of whom 30 died at Festubert.

There were similar levels of loss in the village of Beauly.

Many were in the Fourth Camerons, a territorial battalion formed at Inverness which contained a large number of Gaelic speakers.

Now the impact on their communities and their respective shinty teams, is to be marked in Portree over this weekend .

Acclaimed Easter Ross piper Duncan MacGillivray will play a set of bag-pipes retrieved from the trenches at Festubert, with a tune called "The Beauly Shinty Club" composed by one of two Paterson brothers who perished there, one having captained Beauly to victory in the Camanachd Cup Final of 1913.

Former Scotland shinty captain Gary Innes of the group Mànran will lead the musical performance. It will be just one of the cultural events scheduled. Sorley MacLean's grandson, himself a shinty player, will read the full poem.

There will be special shinty matches involving Kingussie, Skye and the Scots Camanachd (from the armed forces) teams and on Sunday the community will remember the fallen in a church service in Somerled Square

The battle was launched when the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, Field Marshall Sir John French, came under pressure to support a major French offensive at Artois. The British attack took place, for the first time in the war, under cover of darkness and the onslaught was preceded by an artillery bombardment of the German trench line lasting 60 hours.

When the British attack at Festubert ended after10 days, territory a mile in depth across a 3000 yard front, had been taken but at a high price. British casualties numbered 16,000 while German losses totalled 5000 men, amongst them many Highlanders. When Bonnie Prince Charlie's Jacobite army was vanquished at Culloden in 1746 total casualties on both sides came to around 2000 men. Skye historian Murdo Beaton, said "It would seem quite probable, given these statistics, that more Highlanders were killed at Festubert than at Culloden."

Writer and broadcaster Hugh Dan MacLennan, historian of shinty, said: "The Battle of Festubert saw nearly 20,000 men slaughtered in a ten-day period. It is our focus because it was one of the first great killing battles, which saw death on an industrial scale.

"Not only that, but its impact on Highland communities is beyond belief. Skye lost nearly 600 men in the First World War. Twenty-eight left Portree alone and only eight came back alive. At least 60 men from Kingussie were killed in the Great War and half of them perished at Festubert. All this from a town with a population of 1,000 at the time."

He said that following these events in Portree a visit to Festubert is planned when acts of remembrance will be held in the military cemeteries where many of the Highlanders who perished now lie.