Gave the “glad eye”

“My grandmother Jessie met her second husband, Reginald Robinson, on Armistice night when the streets of Dundee were full of revellers,” emails Penny Champion of London.

“When standing in Union Street she had spotted a chap on the other side of the road, noted his sergeant’s stripes and ‘gave him the glad eye’ as she told me when I visited her at Provost Road.

“They married on January 15 1919 at the United Free Church of Scotland in Maryfield Terrace. Jessie, a widow of 26, was a year older than Reginald, a sergeant in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, who was stationed at Broughty Ferry at this stage of the war.

“When he was demobbed, the newlyweds went to live near Sunderland. Reginald died of cancer in 1952. Jessie did not marry again and eventually moved back to Dundee.

“She had emigrated to Canada in 1912 as her brother Jim had found her work as a children’s nurse with the Coste family in Calgary, Alberta. There she met Robert Aitken, an Aberdonian who was a junior chauffeur.

“They were married in June 1914. Robert joined the 31st Canadian Division at the end of that year and was posted to the Western Front in September 1915. Jessie came back to her native Dundee in the hope that she might be able to see him if he got leave.

“Robert was killed in action in April 1916 at St Eloi Craters near Ypres. Jessie had started training to be a midwife and qualified in October 1917 so she was able to support herself financially. She treasured Robert Aitken’s photograph all her life; he was not forgotten.”

Jessie Robinson, whose story is told above.