Raploch father hit by double tragedy
A Stirling man lost two of his sons within three weeks.
John Coyne, Raploch Gatehouse, learned in May that his son William, a private in the Black Watch, had been killed in Mesopotamia.
This week letters arrived at his home, explaining his secondyoungest son Sgt Stephen Coyne had fallen in France.
Sgt Coyne was serving with an Australian trench mortar battery and died on May 21.
His commanding officer Lt Roy Campbell said his death was a great loss as he was “always at his post no matter what came his way”.
Lt Roy added that five minutes before his death Sgt Coyne told him he had heard his brother had been killed.
Chaplain Howes wrote that Sgt Coyne and three others had just taken over duty in the trenches when the area was hit by a shell, killing all four of them.
Sgt Coyne (25) was for seven years a grocer with D&J McEwen, Stirling, but four years earlier he emigrated to Australia and was engaged in contract work in Sydney Harbour.
He joined the Australian Expeditionary Force and saw much service in East Africa and Egypt before heading to France. He had been on the Western Front for nine months.
Mr Coyne had two other sons serving. Philip, a sergeant, came back from America to enlist. A blacksmith to trade, he was employed at Woolwich Arsenal but at that time was with the Royal Anglesey Engineers.
Pte John Coyne was serving with the machine gun section of the Ayrshire Yeomanry.