On this day in 1915 ....

With all the trouble currently besetting the world it is hardly surprising that our commemoration of the centenary of Word War 1 seems to have taken something of a back seat. At the time this was meant to have been the war to end all wars; how wrong could we have been.

As a reminder of the huge geographic scale of the war; on this day in 1915 German South-West Africa capitulated to the South African General Louis Botha.

My photograph combines two of the most potent symbols of WW1as fought in Europe, the field poppy and barbed wire. The poppy is a crystal sand-cast, designed by Sarah Peterson and made by Caithness Glass, to commemorate the outbreak of the First World War. The rusted barbed wire is from the second world war defences on Newburgh beach.