Medals galore for villagers

A function was held in the school at Kinlochard exactly 100 years ago to honour Sgt Daniel Campbell, formerly of 9th Black Watch, to acknowledge the honour he brought to the parish by winning the Military Medal and Belgian Croix de Guerre during World War One. Friends and well-wishers presented him with a silver watch and chain and wallet of Treasury Notes.

***

In Dunblane, Mr Walter Osborne, Springfield Terrace, learned one of his sons on active service , Gunner W Osborne, Royal Field Artillery, had been awarded the Military Medal for gallantry. It followed an incident in which a mine exploded in the centre of a battery during an advance. Before enlisting three years earlier, he was employed as an apprentice ironmonger with Graham and Morton, Stirling.

***

Gartmore villagers were delighted to learn that Pte Peter Clark, Royal Scots Fusiliers, had been awarded a Military Medal for bravery in WW1. The eldest son of Mr John Clark, Corrie Farm, he was wounded in France some months earlier but made a ‘good recovery.’ At the time of writing he had been demobbed.

***

Under a heading ‘More War Office bungling,’ the Observer said it appeared there had been plans to establish a ‘demobilisation centre’ for troops about to leave the Army in Bridge of Allan. The name of the town was on a list of centres planned by the Government.

Although civil servants decided against opening a centre in Bridge of Allan, it’s name continued to appear on the lists of such centres in London.

The Observer said: ‘The result is that quite a number of men have been sent to Bridge of Allan to be demobilised, only to find there are no facilities there for that purpose. Last week, several Glasgow men were sent there, and thence to Edinburgh Castle where they had to remain overnight and finally they were dispatched to Georgetown Camp, near Johnston, where they should have been sent at the outset.’