Military

HELENSBURGH paid its annual tribute to the fallen of two World Wars and other conflicts on Remembrance Sunday 2018, and this was a particularly special occasion as it was the centenary of the World War One armistice.

The service took place in front of one of the most elegant war memorials in Scotland within the superb Garden of Remembrance, all refurbished as part of the Hermitage Park improvement project.

NOT everything stopped when the guns fell silent at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.

THE SUN shone on a moving ceremony in Helensburgh on Sunday November 4 2018, which marked the supreme bravery of a Helensburgh man 100 years ago in the First World War.

George de Cardonnel Elmsall Findlay was awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest military award for gallantry, in recognition of his exceptional leadership in the fields of France on November 4 1918, just a week before the end of the war.

JULY 1916 was a bad World War One month for Helensburgh, with two well-known young officers losing their lives in very different ways.

Royal Flying Corps pilot Lieutenant George Maxwell Vereker Bidie died in a flying accident at Whitstable, Kent, on July 8, and seven days later 2nd Lieutenant Alfred Anthony Douglas Raeburn (right) of the 9th Highland Light Infantry Glasgow Highlanders was killed in action at the Battle of the Somme.

A YOUNG Helensburgh flyer — whose father became the town’s Provost — lost his life in a World War One dogfight in northern France just weeks after becoming engaged.

A TALENTED rugby player whose parents lived in Helensburgh and who was selected by both Scotland and England lost his life early in World War One when his Royal Navy cruiser was torpedoed.

Surgeon James Henry Digby Watson was the son of Engineer Captain James Herbert Watson RN and his wife Eliza Viets Smith, of Westwood House, 17 Glasgow Street.

A HELENSBURGH man suffered the ordeal of being torpedoed and spending almost a fortnight in a lifeboat during World War Two.

A GARELOCHHEAD villager was torpedoed twice in World War Two — and lived to tell both tales.

That was exactly what James Reeves did when Helensburgh Heritage Trust prepared a DVD in which local people recalled interesting memories of the war.

THURSDAY MAY 17 2018 was the 75th anniversary of a major event in World War Two which had very significant Helensburgh connections.

Cinemas throughout the UK showed the epic and moving 1955 film “The Dam Busters”, starring Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd, which recreated the true story of Operation Chastise when in 1943 the RAF’s 617 Squadron attacked the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe dams in Nazi Germany with Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb

SOME of the best-known figures in Helensburgh history shared something else apart from living locally.

The Rev. John Baird, father of John Logie Baird, John Honeyman, the architect, Dr Fordyce Messer of ‘disappearing coachman’ fame, and the Anderson family of Helensburgh benefactors all belonged to the same organisation.

CARDROSS has the unusual — and possibly unique for a village — distinction of having been home to two winners of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry.

The better known of the two was Lieutenant John Reginald Noble Graham, who lived with his parents at Darleith in the village before and after World War One.

A CARDROSS soldier who later moved to Helensburgh had an astonishing military career before, during and after the First World War.

Angus McPherson, who was born in the village on December 10 1890, went on to win the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the Military Cross, and the Distinguished Service Order before leaving the Army on January 27 1921.