Sixth member of footie team to fall
Word reached Dunblane that another former member of the town’s football team had been killed while fighting at the Front.
Pte William Crawford , Black Watch , who died on October 18, 1916, was the sixth member of The Heather to make the supreme sacrifice. News of his death was conveyed to his mother who lived in Sinclair Street, Dunblane. Pte Crawford , who was unmarried and worked as a fencer on Cromlix Estate before enlisting, was well known in Dunblane as a right back for The Heather. He played for the club for 10 years, rarely missing a match. The Observer wrote: “A good back on the football field, he feared no foe and in giving his life for his country, he has played the game on the battle field.” Pte Crawford was the 32nd man from the Dunblane district to die since the start of the war.
*** Pte Hugh Gillies, Royal Scots, son of Mr Malcolm Gillies, insurance agent, Main Street, Bannockburn, was reported wounded while in France. He joined the Army a year earlier. Before that he was an apprentice butcher with the Co-op.
*** Mr John Menzies, cattleman, King’s Park Dairy, Stirling, learned that his only son, William, 22, a private in the Cameron Highlanders, was killed in action on October 18, 1916. The 20-year-old joined the Army two years before the outbreak of war and was involved in the fighting once the conflict started. In February, 1915, he was invalided home with frost-bitten feet but returned to France in June of that year. He saw a great deal of the fighting thereafter.
*** On the homefront, the Observer’s Doune correspondent noted that Mrs Rogerson and family, who had lived in Argaty House for 12 years, were removed from there to Dunblane a week earlier. “During those years, the family was closely and beneficially identified with the life and welfare of Doune and district,”said the correspondent. “As a result, the community views with feelings of reluctance and regret the departure from their midst of a family animated by the kindly disposition they always showed.”