CAPTAIN HUGH ADAM MUNRO
ARGYLL AND SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS
22ND SEPTEMBER 1915 AGE 22
BURIED: MELLINCOURT COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION, FRANCE
This haunting inscription comes from the first lines of Coronach, a poem by Sir Walter Scott of which the last four lines read:
Like dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone - and forever.
It was chosen by Captain Munro's father the at one time well-known Scottish author Neil Munro.
Munro, a newly qualified doctor, was called up on the outbreak of war in his capacity as a territorial soldier. He served in France and was killed on 22 September 1915 as the result of what the local paper described as "a foul German trick".
"A party had been out on picket duty when a German flag was noticed stuck in the ground some distance off. Lieut Munro went to bring in the flag but on pulling it up a bomb tied to the stick exploded and killed him instantaneously."
The newspaper went on to report how the experience proved instructive when shortly afterwards some soldiers came across the body of a French soldier. The officer was about to give orders to have the man buried when he remembered how Munro had been killed. He checked the body carefully and discovered that it too had been booby trapped.