Lookat this photo (shown right) and well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?
He is a Scottish soldier, his cap, his kilt and his piper’s hose couldn’t state the case more clearly. Actually, he isn’t, but that’s just the start of a long and fascinating piece of research.
He was just a name on a family tree; we knew only the bare minimum. He had a tragically short life – killed in 1917, just months before his 21st birthday – in what is today a largely forgotten theatre of the First World War: Mesopotamia. If there was little to know of his life, perhaps it should be possible to find out about his death. We had four pieces of ‘evidence’: a photograph, a name and two ‘facts’ of family information. The first was ‘he was in the Black Watch’.
In fact, he wasn’t. His death certificate showed that he was in the 1st Battalion Seaforth Highlanders, confirmed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Debt of Honour register, and by the regimental museum of the Highland Regiments, which identified the uniform in the photograph. The second said he was ‘killed at Gallipoli’. Again, he wasn’t.