A lighter side:

Dec 5       Had our St A dinner in billet last night. Pipers McLean & McMillan played during dinner. Made one forget for the moment that we are only a few miles from firing line.

Dec 6       Back in our old billet at farm. Mr Yeomans held service in barn and I enjoyed it very much. Had a shoot after service. Bag – 1 hare, 3 rabbits and 2 pheasants.

The diary finished on Dec 15, only 4 months after it started and what a huge amount happened in that time. Grandfather would surely have kept diaries if the rest of the war and I would dearly like to read them but this one is, to my knowledge, the only one to survive

Without a doubt, his saddest moment of the war was having to take the body of Captain Charles Seymour Munro MC, from the battlefield just before the end of the war. Captain Munro was, of course, the son of the then Munro Chief, Sir Hector Munro of Foulis. Grandfather brought Captain Munro’s belongings home to Sir Hector and was given a cigarette case by him in gratitude. That cigarette case has a place of honour in my home along with Grandfather’s spurs, sgean dubh, medals and bonnet. A bonnet, not that one, figures in a postscript at the end of this article.

For his services Major Donald Munro was awarded the Military Cross, the 1914 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

After the war he was posted to India and he was then posted from Meerut, India to the Depot (presumably Fort George) in December 1921.

He died of pneumonia on the 8th of January 1932 in his 53rd year.

It is that sad that he had served through the Boer War, WW1, Ireland and India only to die at such a young age of a non military cause. One of my greatest regrets is that I did not know him for he died before I was born. In fact my maternal Grandfather Johnstone died within a month of Grandfather Munro, so I did not get to know either of them.

© Donald Munro Mount Nasura Western Australia

Major Donald Munro MC Seaforth Highlanders

EDITOR : Postscript to the above. At the Clan Gathering, I mentioned to Chief Hector that my Grandfather had brought Captain Munro’s belongings back home to Sir Hector and he sent me the following extract from his father’s diary.

“On June 5th 1940 ‘C’ Company, the 4th Battalion The Seaforth Highlanders part of the 51st Highland Division reached the village of Limeaux in Northern France during its retreat from the Somme. With the enemy very close, Captain Patrick Munro of Foulis, their Company commander had the badly mauled remnants of ‘B’ Company (which included their only surviving officer, his youngest brother Hector Gascoigne) attached to his Company. Having just lost his driver, Captain Munro put his brother Hector in charge of his truck with orders to withdraw by road whilst he himself led the Company across country. The withdrawal took place without incident and they reached the village of Ramburelles at about 5 a.m. but Hector failed to arrive. Just as they set off to search for him he turned up on foot with a long face and explained that try as he might he couldn’t get the truck to start. He knew the Germans were very close and having his own equipment to carry he had no alternative but to abandon everything else in the truck, little realising that it contained all his elder brother possessed except for the clothes he stood up in. One of Captain Munro’s greatest losses was his late Uncle *Hector’s badge in his Glengarry bonnet, which had been all through WW1.” (*Captain Hector C. S. Munro yr. of Foulis MC was killed near Cambrai, N. France on 22 October 1918 aged 23 years. Coincidentally his nephew Hector Gascoigne was exactly the same age in June 1940).