The history of Scotland has often been bloody, and the nation has historically embodied a strong martial tradition. Scots have fought in many
battles and served in
armed forces in many parts of the world. This service has been as part of Scots armies, as mercenaries, and in the
British Armed Forces. The service of the martial Scots is commemorated with
war memorials across Scotland and around the world. Scottish war memorials commemorate the sacrifices made by Scottish combatants as early as 1263 through the more recent
war in Iraq and
conflict in Afghanistan. The earliest memorials recorded the battles fought against
Viking and English invaders, and subsequent ones commemorated Scottish civil wars stemmming from
religious intolerance or the
succession of royalty. Most of these early memorials were not erected until the 19th century, sometimes hundreds of years after the actual battles had taken place, and generally did not list the individual names of those lost in these wars. By the late 19th century after several small
colonial wars, the
infantry and
cavalry regiments of Scotland began erecting memorials in churches and garrison towns in Scotland. These memorials began listing the names of those killed in combat, sometimes featuring only
officers, but occasionally naming
non-commissioned officers and other
enlisted men. The first recorded civic war memorial in Scotland naming local men who died overseas in combat is located in the churchyard at
Balmaclellan, and was erected after the
Crimean War. It was not until fifty years later after the
Second Boer War that other such civic war memorials were erected in Scotland. By 1914, a precedent had been set for local communities to erect war memorials when they had lost their sons in combat. By the time the
First World War culminated in 1918, nearly every community in Scotland had erected a memorial to their own war dead. Around the same time, a proposal for a national war memorial led to the creation of the shrine at
Edinburgh Castle, the
Scottish National War Memorial. This memorial continues to memorialize Scots who have died in wars since 1914, and currently commemorates 206,779 men and women who have died serving in UK and
Commonwealth Forces. At the same time as the civic and national memorials were being erected, factories, banks, golf clubs, boys' clubs, schools, universities, churches, railways, police, post offices, and even a prison erected war memorials to those men and women who had gone to war. Because of the size of military formations during the First World War, there were not only regimental memorials erected but
brigade and
divisional memorials as well. in the
Scottish Highlands was unveiled in 1952, dedicated to the World War II
British Commandos that trained at
Achnacarry Castle. After the
Second World War, many communities had the task of adding names to their existing war memorials. The village of
Aberlady in
East Lothian used the memorial they originally erected for the
Boer War and reused for the
First World War to list their Second World War dead. Other communities chose to erect new memorials for those lost during the Second World War instead of updating or adding to existing memorials. Even today, communities are still erecting war memorials to men and women who died in the First and Second World Wars. Recent unveilings of Scottish war memorials include: • The civic war memorials at
Waterloo and
Cowie. • The Air Forces Memorial at
Grangemouth. • The
Black Watch memorial at
Balhousie Castle. • "Buckhaven’s Secret" in
Fife. •
'Bamse' Memorial to the
Norwegian Navy dog at
Montrose. • WW1 Nurses' Memorial at
Central Library, Edinburgh, unveiled on 11 November 2015. • French merchant ship
SS Longwy crew memorial in Doune Cemetery,
Girvan, commemorating the crew lost in a 1917 torpedoing, unveiled on 12 October 2024. ==Types of Scottish war memorials==