MacGillivary/Scott transcription (“Larbert and the Great War)

EDWARD EASTON

7th Bn Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

Private Edward EASTON

Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders 7th Battalion Service Number: 276360

Date of Death: 3 September 1917

Age at Death: 20

Family: Son of Alexander and Elizabeth Easton, nee Penman, 26 Longdyke.

Edward Easton was an employee of Carron Company who enlisted in Alloa for army service on 30 May 1915. On 27 September that year, he left from Southampton for the Western Front.

Whilst fighting in the Battle of the Somme on 23 July 1916, he was wounded in the back and face but returned to his battalion three days later. In April 1917 what is described as an “Old Bullet Wound neck” required almost a week of medical treatment. Five months later, Edward was serving in the northern sector of the Ypres Salient when he was killed during the battle of Passchendaele. A chaplain wrote that “A shell hit a corner of [their] camp where he was on duty with his comrades. He died almost instantaneously.” The battalion war diary confirms that, while in training at Murat Camp, “2 enemy shells burst near Camp killing 3 ORs and wounding 4.” Edward was one of the men killed.

Edward’s brother, Andrew, of the 10th Battalion Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, was reported to have died of wounds on 27 September 1915 and then in November he was reported to be a prisoner of war in Germany – in a camp in Cologne.