Bearsden War Memorial

I am indebted to the dolvolturnocassino.it website as a source of information Commando units recruited from among men already in the army but who showed the physical ability and the initiative to undertake 'special forces' work raiding behind enemy lines.  Number 9 Commando recruited mainly from Scottish regiments, including Gilbert Reid Neilson, who was in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. In the autumn of 1943 the battalion sailed from Liverpool to North Africa, then Italy where Allied forces were slogging their way up the Italian mainland having landed in the south.  Tough German defence (Italy itself had capitulated) and terrain that lent itself to defence made progress very slow.  Initially on the east coast, the only active mission was to land on two small islands in the Adriatic but they turned out to be unoccupied; this was undertaken by Number 2 Troop. They were then transferred to the west coast of Italy to Bacoli where some were based in the castle: Britis...

Photo and quotes in the text are from the Hillhead High School War Memorial Volume (1921) John Francis Logan was born 6 th April 1884 at 4 Otago Street, Hillhead.  The 1894 map shows buildings on Otago Street right up to the junction with those fronting on Great Western Road: However, the properties on the corner were demolished to make way for a bank and today this is the building that survives.  The first shop on Otago Street (Retro) is number 8 (the low building between number 8 and the corner building is an electricity sub-station): John's father, James Logan, was a drapery warehouseman.  He had married John's mother, Frances Ann Fish, in Gateshead in 1883.  John was their first child. By 1891 the family was in Kelvinside at 12 Kelbourne Street and John has a younger brother, William James, born in 1887. Note I believe that street renumbering in the 20th Century has led to number 12 now being number 54.  (Thanks to multiple people on the Facebook page "Ol...

  Hugh Nicol Ritchie was born on 26th September 1898 at a street then called Park Road South, Whiteinch.  The clue is in the name, of course and this street is now called Victoria Park Road South: Unfortunately as the streets were renamed they also seem to have been renumbered because while Hugh was born at number 70, the modern street has only odd numbers.  The map above is from 1894 so within four years of Hugh's birth, so we there is a reasonable chance it was in one of the four blocks shown fronting onto the park in then suburban Whiteinch. Google Earth view of the four terraces fronting the park, plus a fifth terrace to the west (right) that is built around the same time - Hugh's birthplace is probably one of these Hugh's parents were both from Ardrossan. Andrew Ritchie and Barbara Williamson Nicol, married in 1890.  His father's occupation on Hugh's birth record was 'fish salesman'.  By the 1911 census he described himself as a 'fish merchant' ...