7 August 2014 Ed Campbell - The Dunblane War Memorial

Last week's meeting was an international affair as we had 4 visitors from our twin club, the Rotary Club of Temora in New South Wales and Jill Adams presented a banner from the Rotary Club of Toronto Forest Hill which she visited during her recent holiday in Canada,

President Peter Farr welcomed our Temora visitors, Rob and Helen Oliver and Lloyd and Helen Maxwell as well as club members and partners and our guest speaker, honorary member Ed Campbell and his wife, Cilla.

Following the meal, Ed gave an interesting and comprehensive account of the background to his recently published book, Dunblane War Memorial, Remembering Dunblane's Fallen. The book was originally intended to be a record of the service details of those listed on the recently refurbished War Memorial which is located at The Haugh by the Allan Water. However, during his research, Ed found many interesting aspects about the individuals who were listed on the memorial and had also found information on others who had given their lives but were not listed. The result is an illustrated book of over 150 pages with service information of the 130 men and women listed on the Memorial and a further 11 who were not listed, together with the history of the Memorial, the involvement of Dunblane in both wars and accounts about some of those individuals who were killed.

There were some moving stories of the sacrifices made during both Great Wars, in particular, the McLean family where all 6 brothers enlisted in the army; 4 were killed and a further died shortly after the war ended from the effects of the conflict.

All profits from the sale of the book go to Service charities and copies are available at the Dunblane Museum, the Library and other outlets.

Graham Russell gave a well-deserved vote of thanks to Ed for his talk.