The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Shared tributes
“A group of S1 students from Perth Academy should have just returned from a trip to France where they would have paid their respects to a number of former pupils of their school who fell in both world wars,” emails David Dykes. “Sadly this wasn’t to be.
“Thanks to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, however, we can leave tributes on a virtual Wall of Remembrance on their website. Their gardeners in France also kindly agreed to place tributes in honour of those who fell during the Normandy campaign.
“As a result of this initiative we were able to leave tributes to two former pupils of Perth Academy and one of them led to a response from Alison Southern of Southampton via Twitter.
“She said: ‘I too recently requested a marker for Sgt David Laing, so I was interested to see your post via the Wall of Remembrance. Our connection is via my 89-year-old mother (who has recently passed away) who was aged 14 in 1944.
‘Living in Southampton, she told us about local people being asked to give board and lodging to the pre D-day troops. A young man of 30 years of age stayed with her family. His name was Sgt David Laing from Scotland and he was with the 4 Commando.
‘My mother remembered that he slept all day, and would go off with a blackened face on night manoeuvres. All too soon he was gone and my mother’s family never saw or heard from him again. Only in very recent years were we able to do some research on the internet.
‘We found out that sadly he was killed in action on June 10 1944 and is buried in Ranville Military Cemetery. We have visited his grave. It is such a sad story, but he will always be remembered by our family.
‘It is quite incredible that just laying that CWGC tribute has connected me to Perth Academy, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the photo of your tribute to the same person’.”
Nancy Johnston of Crieff added more to David Laing’s story. Educated at Perth Academy, an electrician to trade and a footballer with St Johnstone FC, he emigrated to South Africa and then came home to join up. Quite a story.
“A story of the power of social media in these strange times and a family in Southampton that have never forgotten David Laing from Huntingtowerfield.”