World War Losses
The village paid a heavy toll during the First World War. The war memorial records that eleven young men fell -Private Joseph Barrie, Private James Bruce, Private John Cameron, Lieutenant Archibald W R Don, Lieutenant Robert McPherson Don, Gunner Robert Marr, Private James B Morrison, Private William Philip, Private Alex R Urquhart, Private David Urquhart and Lance Corporal David N Winter. In 1921 the war memorial was dedicated at a well-attended and very moving ceremony.
Mr Robert Don of Tealing House lost two sons in the Great War, Archibald at Salonika in 1916 and Robert, elsewhere in Greece, in 1917. He commissioned a memorial seat to the memory of his two sons, which still remains in Tealing, placed just outside the Old Post Office. In 1915, just one year before he died, the young soldier Archibald Don poignantly wrote:
How shall we mourn these dead, so rich in dying;
long shall I weep who living were so fair?
Singing they went through life, shall we go sighing?
Smiling in death, can we not also dare?
The memorial also lists four local men who died during World War 11-Flight Sergeant R Jack, Naval Sergeant H Jack, A B J Johnston and Corporal L Mackie.