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Found this quite sad... I had been up visiting my grannys grave and took photos of some old soldiers graves ... today while looking through them I came across this one... of a man who received the highest honour in our country, but was buried in a paupers grave or common ground and wondered why.. so had a read and found that after he had left the armed forces he fell on hard times , died and was cremated and his ashes buried here in Janefield cemetery in Glasgow , not even a stone was erected until a few years ago by the British Legion.. what a way to treat a hero.. I also found it strange that he was cremated back in the 1800s. he would have to have been one of the first cremations. Also shoudlnt his medal be here in Scotland and not in London.
I'm wondering that there are no relations of his alive today. If so, I'd think they'd have the VC medal then. Would that be correct?
No Travric they dont.. its in London at a military museum . I dont think he had children..
Sgt McKechnie retired from the army following 22 years of service and moved back to Glasgow.
The hero married relatively late in life but his wife is thought to have died soon afterwards and he passed away on 5 July, 1886, not long after her death. He was 59 years old.
William Brockie, the secretary of The Scots Guards Association, said: "He was one of the first people awarded the VC and it's very sad that he was laid to rest in a pauper's grave.
"The dedication service was the right thing to do because it was high time he was given a burial with the military honours he deserves."
The Edinburgh-based firm Abercorn Memorials donated the 27in grey granite headstone, worth 500, and it was put into place last week.
Sgt McKechnie's VC medal is kept in a vault at the Scots Guards' regimental headquarters in London, but a replica is on display.
Its seems this man wasnt alone in him dying in poverty after winning the VC.. many did ..how awful for these brave men and what a disgrace our government is..in not treating these men they way they deserved..
Dowling was another who found that life outside the army did not live up to his exploits in spiking the guns of the enemy on daring raids outside the besieged city of Lucknow during the 1857 Indian Mutiny.
He had the medal pinned to his chest by Queen Victoria in 1860, but five years later a medical board decided he was unfit for service due to a lack of strength and bronchitis, brought on by an old shell fragment wound to his chest.
He had a two shillings-a-week (10p) army pension and another of £10 a year as a VC winner, plus a job as a customs officer on Liverpool Docks, but still struggled to make ends meet – much of his money going on medical bills. He struggled on, barely able to breathe and eventually unable to walk, until the cold winter of 1887.
Mr Murphy writes: “This brave soldier was buried unknown and unnoticed, without ceremony, on 20 February in Ford Cemetery, watched over by his wife and children only.
“His final resting place was an unmarked pauper’s grave, which was to be disturbed several times in the years to come when other poor unfortunates were interred with him.”
Its seems this man wasnt alone in him dying in poverty after winning the VC.. many did ..how awful for these brave men and what a disgrace our government is..in not treating these men they way they deserved..
Dowling was another who found that life outside the army did not live up to his exploits in spiking the guns of the enemy on daring raids outside the besieged city of Lucknow during the 1857 Indian Mutiny.
He had the medal pinned to his chest by Queen Victoria in 1860, but five years later a medical board decided he was unfit for service due to a lack of strength and bronchitis, brought on by an old shell fragment wound to his chest.
He had a two shillings-a-week (10p) army pension and another of £10 a year as a VC winner, plus a job as a customs officer on Liverpool Docks, but still struggled to make ends meet – much of his money going on medical bills. He struggled on, barely able to breathe and eventually unable to walk, until the cold winter of 1887.
Mr Murphy writes: “This brave soldier was buried unknown and unnoticed, without ceremony, on 20 February in Ford Cemetery, watched over by his wife and children only.
“His final resting place was an unmarked pauper’s grave, which was to be disturbed several times in the years to come when other poor unfortunates were interred with him.”
All very sad - too many heroes have been forgotten about too easily in the past.
Everywhere.
In the U.S. you can find your way up a dirt track behind a mental hospital, closed late in the last century, and there in a field of unmowed grass among the hundreds of unmarked graves of civilian inmates (including my grand aunt) who died in the place, you will also find a graves of U.S. veterans. Their graves are at least marked...but strange that no one wanted them buried elsewhere.
You know dizzybint I'd figure that the regiments those men served with could and have the wherewithal to fund the rememberance of those VC winners who have passed on whether it be by memorials or burials. I mean how much could it cost? It's even more important because those men and their ancetsors and families are long gone. This cameto me when i read about individuals going to WWI gravesites in Europe and they commented they were the ONLY ones there at the time viewing the cemetery. It dawned on them that it made sense....those dead men had no living relatives to pay their respects.
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