THE names of those who fell in the First World War are on memorials in every corner of Scotland, but the toll on shinty-playing communities is to be highlighted for the first time.
As Britain prepares to mark the centenary of the war's outbreak next year, Shinty's Heroes, an emotional history set to music and photography, will form part of the cultural BLAS festival 2013 in the Highlands in September.
The show will remember the teams of Skye Camanachd and Kyles Athletic from Tighnabruaich who lost the equivalent of two teams each, devastating their communities, with Beauly losing 25 players. It will also highlight the 'missing five' of Kingussie, who never received their commemorative Camanachd Cup winning caps from 1914 because they were killed in battle in France.
There was the loss to Scottish sport of Dr Johnnie Cattanach of Newtonmore Camanachd, a Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps, at Gallipoli.
The best shinty player of his era and the only player from the ancient sport inducted into Scottish Sport's Hall of Fame, Cattanach enlisted shortly after the outbreak but died of wounds suffered in the Dardannelles in July 1915, aged 30.
Speaking at the draw for the quarter final of this year's Camanachd Cup at The Commando Memorial, Spean Bridge, yesterday, show director Hugh Dan MacLennan, shinty's historian, said such a tribute was overdue.
He said: "Many shinty-playing communities lost generations of men; soldiers who took their sport with them proudly to the frontline. I have a letter from the 5th Cameron Highlanders from the Earl of Seafield, a commander of one of the companies, to stick supplier John MacPherson in Inverness, requesting three dozen camans and balls to be sent to France.
"There is a letter of thanks from the 'French Camanachd Club', made up of soldiers from different Highland Shinty teams."
He said one of the Beauly team that won the Camanachd Cup in 1913, Donald Paterson, became corporal piper in the 4th Cameron Highlanders and died at Festubert in 1915. "His blood-stained pipes were returned home to his family. They found a pipe tune written by Donald called 'The Beauly Shinty Club' and that song will be played as part of the show," he added.
The show will be will be in Fort William on the eve of Scottish Hydro Camanachd Cup final.
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