The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Sad injustice of Scone Great War victim’s demise told in new project for Armistice Day.
No grave and no closure given to relatives of man ‘trampled in mud’
Participating in a First World War memorial project has helped a Scone family to put right a 100-year-old injustice.
George Beedie died aged only 19 in France, most likely “trampled in the mud”, but his family have never had a grave to mark his death.
Scone Sweetie Shop owner Enid Davidson, 65, has researched and recorded a piece for the Scone Remembers Memorial Sound Walk, capturing her great uncle’s story.
Mrs Davidson said her family had initially been told George was sick in hospital, but when his letters home stopped his mother demanded answers and was eventually told he had been killed on August 1 1917.
Mrs Davidson said: “For my great grandmother it was horrendous. To think that her son had gone off and didn’t come back. She didn’t have a last resting place for him. There is no grave. There is nothing and that must have been hard.
“Recording this now has made him real.”
Transferred from The Black Watch to the Gordon Highlanders, George was involved in battles at Messines and Ypres.
The Memorial Sound Walk project focuses on the lives of more than 72 soldiers from in and around the village of Scone who died during the war.
Visitors can stop at one of the plaques installed on lamp-posts and use their mobile phones to learn more about the dead men. Their stories will also be published in a book.
Mrs Davidson said:“The more I’ve got into it the more emotionally involved I have become.
“I don’t think my mother and her family dwelt on the past. It wasn’t the thing to do. It only filtered through later on, when my son was at school learning about the Great War. That was when my mother spoke about her uncle. Before that it was never discussed at all.”
The project will open on November 17 at the Robert Douglas Memorial Institute.
Dr Peter Olsen first came up with the idea for the walk four years ago. He said the concept was unique in Scotland.
“What we wanted to do was bring these people back in the minds of those who are around at the moment, especially the young people, and we have done that.”