102 years on, biscuit photo frame hasn’t crumbled

THEY were standard Army issue and so hard they were known as ‘molar breakers’ and ‘reserve ammo’.

Now the unappetising number 4 British Army biscuit, supplied to soldiers on the front line in the First World War, has cemented its tough reputation – one is still being used as a picture frame 102 years after it was first made to be eaten.

Before he was killed in action by a shell in the Artois region of France in March 1915, a civvy street cobbler from Inverness, Lance Corporal Duncan MacKay, of the Cameron Highlanders, sent home a photograph of himself and a comrade in arms, framed in one of the tough-as-teak biscuits.

The memento, pictured, is looked after by his nephew, also Duncan MacKay, 90, who served in the Second World War in the same regiment as his uncle.

It is on display in his home in Kyle of Lochalsh, Ross-shire, with the elder Mr MacKay’s medals and his poignant war diary.

For years, his family puzzled about the other soldier in the photograph and even posted an appeal on social media last year to try to discover his identity.

David MacKenzie, from Aberdeen, said it was his great uncle, Hugh Ross – who survived the war, later owned a licensed grocery business in Inverness, was elected to the Inverness Town Council and served as Provost between 1945 and 1948.

Last night, Lance Corporal MacKay’s great-nephew John Sutherland, 54, of Culloden, Inverness, said: ‘I have been fascinated by the portrait in the biscuit ever since I can remember, so it’s great to find out at last who was in the picture.’