Kenneth Grant

 Kenneth ‘Keachie’ Grant was 28 when he died. 

We have four glimpses of his life.

The first glimpse is on 5^th August 1915 at 9 Queen Street, Inverness, where a baby boy is born to Corporal Kenneth Grant of the 1^st Seaforth Highlanders (the Great War was one year old) and Helen (nee MacLennan, although her marriage certificate names her as Nellie).  Before the war, Kenneth senior had worked as a groom and Helen/Nellie was a domestic servant (from their wedding certificate). Baby Kenneth may have needed a nickname to distinguish him from his father, hence Keachie; I wonder if this was a family name as I cannot see it was in widespread use.

This is Queen Street today, the River Ness is at the end of the street:

The second glimpse of Keachie is aged 22, on his wedding day in Glasgow, at St Mary’s Cathedral – on Great Western Road, locals will know there are two churches by Kelvinbridge with prominent steeples and the Cathedral is the one closer to Glasgow.  His occupation is an apprentice baker and he is marrying 19-year old Agnes Hayes on 2^nd July 1937 (the day pilot Amelia Earhart disappeared).  Agnes, daughter of a wood sawyer (thank you, Elizabeth!), has as her occupation a creamery worker.

The third glimpse, is the 1940 Valuation Roll for New Kilpatrick where Mrs Agnes Grant is listed as the proprietor of 48 Killermont Road, Bearsden.  This is presumably the family home Keachie and Agnes established before he was called up for duty in the war.

The final glimpse jumps the story forward to 1944, Keachie is aged 28.  He is in the Army Catering Corps, attached to a royal artillery regiment somewhere in either Italy or Sicily.  Something happened to put Keachie in hospital, although we know it wasn’t due to a battle wound.  He is to be evacuated, presumably for further treatment or rest, to Algeria flying from Catania in Sicily to Maison Balance in Algeria (now the main airport at Algiers).  It’s Thursday 24^th February 1944.  He is put in a Dakota transport aircraft adapted for carrying hospitalised patients with a doctor and a nurse on board.  The weather is poor with low cloud and some ground fog and the plane’s direct route is across Sicily.  A route is mapped flying by instruments and the plane takes off shortly before 9am.  For reasons that are unknown, at around 9.15am as the plane is about 1 mile north-west of Caltagirone it is so low that it hits the ground, bounces, hits a hillside.  As well as Keachie, everyone on board is killed: 12 other British patients, two American patients, a British doctor, American nurse and assistant and the American crew of six.

This is not the crash site, but gives an idea of the area (an American report refers to the plane flying through a canyon):

Keachie is buried in the CWGC Cemetery at Catania in Sicily.  The inscription on his grave reads, “Sweet memories of you and I together will linger in my heart forever.”

Credits for this profile of Keachie Grant: first to the knowledgeable and helpful people on the forum WW2 Talk who answered my question about what could have been the common cause of death of 14 British servicemen on the same day.  Through that discussion I found Judy Barger’s excellent blog posts on the American nurses working in the evacuation service (https://judithbarger.com/ww2-flight-nurses-22-apr-2023/).  She provided me with a lot more information and is planning a new blog post on events leading up to the crash.

And to Elizabeth for keeping me right!