The Scottish Military Research Group - Commemorations Project

Adam Brown · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:30 pm Post subject: Communities with large losses

In another thread Spoons posted a quote from a website about the community of Rankinston in Ayrshire

dhubthaigh · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 6:01 pm Post subject:

From Moulin Parish (For clarification the memorial is situated in Pitlochry Wink

)

Proceeding, Mr Mitchell said that the four panels in the memorial contained the names of 81 men and one nurse. As the total number of the parish was not much over 250, the death rate showed a loss of nearly one in three, which was greatly in excess of the average

Thats roughly about 32.4 %

Adam Brown · Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 8:12 pm Post subject:

My grandfather was from Pitlochry and served in the First World War, looks like I'm lucky to be here! He was in the Navy though which might help to explain it.

I wonder if there may be a way of finding a reason for this why some places suffered so heavily and some places didn't? If certain places had TF units and those companies were heavily involved in fighting would that account for heavy casualties from specific communities or were they just unlucky?

I'm thinking here perhaps about places in the Borders which maybe lost a lot of men in Gallipoli in 1915 whilst serving in 4th and 5th KOSBs.

I suppose the only way we'll find that out is by identifying every name on every memorial and when they died. That may take a while!

Adam