I was honoured to visit Harry’s final resting place
Olga makes moving trip after tracing uncle’s war grave
29.10.2018 A well known Paisley woman made a moving trip to Germany to honour a relative who died just weeks before the end of the First World War.
Olga Clayton,76, was a Labour councillor with the old Renfrew District for 25 years and was leader of the local authority before she gave up politics in 1996.
Still keeping busy, she has just returned from Cologne, where she visited the grave of her uncle.
Mrs Clayton, a former pupil of North Primary and Mossvale Secondary, said: “I was brought up by my great aunt and her husband, Annie and Tammy Brown, and Harry Brown was Tammy’s brother. He was in the First World War.
“Annie was my blood aunt, she was my grandfather’s sister.
“Tammy had been in the First World War as well and he got a wee bit maudlin as he got older and he used to cry about his brother Harry who had been killed as a young man, probably about 20 years of age, I don’t quite know.
“And he was killed on October 22, 1918, just so near to the end.”
But Tammy did not know where his brother was buried, and it was only after research by Mrs Clayton’s daughters Olga and Lisa that the family discovered he was buried in a cemetery maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in Cologne.
“Because this was the 100th anniversary my daughters suggested that we go to Cologne because noone’s ever been there in all that time,” Mrs Clayton said.
And she added that the trip was not only to honour her uncle.
“It was to honour all the people who gave their lives for us in the First World War,” she said.
“You can never, ever, begin to imagine what it must have been like fighting in that war. “You just can’t.” Approaching Harry’s grave in the immaculately-kept cemetery was an emotional experience for Mrs Clayton.
“There aren’t any words to describe how you feel,” she said.
“You just look at all of the graves of all of those men of every British nationality...all different regiments.
“And Harry was the Royal Scots Fusiliers.
“It was really very overpowering and tremendous.
“So we stood there for a wee while.
“We brought some pictures of Harry and Tammy with us.
“We left them in front of his gravestone.
“And all around the graves were chestnuts fallen from the trees, so we brought four chestnuts home from around the grave,”
Mrs Clayton was content that she had made the journey to the cemetery in Cologne.
“I felt I had done something to recognise the sacrifice that Harry and other people had made for me and for us all in that war,” she said.
“I’m really, really glad I did it, very glad.”
And Harry and all the others like him will be in Mrs Clayton’s thoughts this Remembrance Sunday when she, as usual, visits the war memorial in Paisley town centre.
“Obviously, it’s more poignant because it is 100 years and there have been wars since then,” she said.
“And hopefully, there won’t be more again but that doesn’t look like the way the world’s moving.
“It ’ s very important to remember wars, what people have done.
“And young people, I don’t know if they do have any understanding, and that’s not necessarily their fault because I don’t think, anywhere, we talk enough about war and how horrendous it is.
“There is nothing glorious about it at all.”
I felt I had done something to recognise the sacrifice that Harry and others made for us all