Answering Lord Kitchener's call for volunteer soldiers in the early months of the Great War, Gavin Anderson, a 42-year-old married father of two from Hawick, enlisted into the Army. And after his basic training he was sent overseas in 1915 to see service against the Turks at Gallipoli.
Conditions on Gallipoli defy description. The terrain and close fighting did not allow for the dead to be buried. Flies and other vermin flourished in the heat, which caused epidemic sickness and thousands of men were evacuated to hospital.
Gavin
succumbed to illness and this led to his eventual discharge from the army in 1916 as being "no longer fit for war service".
Despite periods of convalescence, Gavin died at his home in Waverley Terrace and was buried in Wilton Cemetery less than a week before the end of the Great War.
Graves such as this one in Wilton Cemetery will now be recorded by the CWGC
Established in 1917, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission pays tribute to the 1,700,000 men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died in the two world wars. Since its inception, the Commission has constructed 2,500 war cemeteries and one million casualties are now commemorated at military and civil sites in some 150 countries, one of the Commission's guiding principles being that: "Each of the dead should be commemorated by name on a headstone or memorial".
The sheer scale of the task in commemorating each and every war casualty meant that clerical mistakes were made and it has been estimated that around 20,000 names were overlooked. Gavin Anderson is one of these men. Although his name appears on the Hawick Roll of Honour, the CWGC had no record of his death and they required evidence that he died after discharge of causes directly attributable to war service.
Fortunately, rare documentary evidence still existed to prove that Gavin's widow Mary received a war pension of 20 shillings a week in November 1918.
With the help of Sandra Riddle at Scottish Borders Council's burials department, Gavin's grave in Wilton Cemetery has been located and now after 90 years his grave and name will be recorded in perpetuity by the War Graves Commission. But there are another dozen or so Hawick men like Gavin who have yet to be officially recognised by the CWGC. Hopefully, their time for remembrance will come for they deserve no less.
Gavin's entry on the CWGC database appears at: http://www.cwgc.org/search/ casualty_details.aspx?casualty=75227876.
Derek Robertson is the author of 'All These Fine Fellows: Hawick and The Great War', which is available from the writer at 3 Station Cottages, Langholm Street, Newcastleton, TD9 0QX. Priced £10 inc p&p, all proceeds will be donated to the Scottish Motor Neurone Disease Association.
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