Pte William Donald Munro

[michaeldr]

Name: MUNRO, WILLIAM DONALD

Initials: W D

Nationality: United Kingdom

Rank: Private

Regiment: Scottish Horse

Unit Text: 1st/3rd

Age: 21

Date of Death: 01/11/1915

Service No: 648

Additional information: Son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Munro, of 4, Earlston Place, Edinburgh.

Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead

Grave/Memorial Reference: D. I. 4.

Cemetery: PIETA MILITARY CEMETERY

Country: Malta

The earth is shallow on Malta and during both wars, many joint or collective burials were made as graves had to be cut into the underlying rock. During the Second World War, such work was particularly hazardous because of air raids. Most of these graves are marked by recumbent markers on which several inscriptions could be carved, and for the sake of uniformity, the same type of marker was used for single graves.

Location Information: The Cemetery is located in Triq id-Duburi (Our Lady of Sorrows Street), 2 kilometres south-west of Valletta on the road to Sliema. On the edge of the Gwardamanga district, the entrance is on Triq II-Principessa Melita, leading to Triq Tal-Pieta and Msida Sea Front and Creek.

Historical Information: From the spring of 1915, the hospitals and convalescent depots established on the islands of Malta and Gozo dealt with over 135,000 sick and wounded, chiefly from the campaigns in Gallipoli and Salonika, although increased submarine activity in the Mediterranean meant that fewer hospital ships were sent to the island from May 1917.

There are 1,303 Commonwealth casualties of the First World War buried or commemorated at Pieta Military Cemetery, including 20 Indian servicemen who were cremated at Lazaretto Cemetery.

The 1/3rd Scottish Horse [together with the 1/1st and the 1/2nd ] landed at Suvla on 2nd September and joined the 2nd Mounted Division. There is precious little recorded of their time there in the regular literature of the campaign; the very reliable Ray Westlake writing in his ‘British Regiments at Gallipoli’ was able to garner less the a couple of hundred words regarding the Scottish Horse’s activity at Gallipoli until their withdrawal on the 19th/20th Dec 1915. However he does mention a visit by Gen. Sir Ian Hamilton to their trenches on the 25th Sept when the general noticed that some of the men had been issued with rifles fitted with telescopic sights and he saw that the men “are as keen as schoolboys out for their first shoot.” No doubt 21 year old William Donald Munro fitted that description.