Interesting special edition about WWI.
A couple of notes, I came across one of the WWI battlefield crosses locally.
I believe there are a few around but only one I have seen. It is inside the
church so probably in better condition than those in the magazine.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/doffcocker/sets/72157634357898046
http://goo.gl/DAkPYC
The article on sailors, one thing to bear in mind if looking for any
merchant seamen who died in WWI is that they are only classed as war
casualties, and recorded as such by the CWGC, if they died by direct action
of the enemy.
So if they were killed when a ship was torpedoed then they are a war
casualty but if they took to the lifeboats and died of exposure they are
not. All Royal Navy sailors killed in the huge explosion in Halifax are on
the CWGC but not the merchant seamen on ships nearby who were killed.
A week ago I came across a very impress memorial on Skye to a New Zealand
sailor on a New Zealand Hospital Ship who died of fever in Southampton, it
was paid for by his comrades but had fallen over. It quite possibly will
not be repaired because not the responsibility of the CWGC.
There was a lot of resentment in the Western Isles after WWI because many of
their men had been in the Merchant Navy so many places did not erect war
memorials until relatively recently.
Martin Briscoe
Fort William
martin(a)mbriscoe.me.uk