Second Lieutenant Hugh Clarke

Second Lieutenant Hugh Reginald Stanley Clarke, 11th ( Reserve ) Battalion, Gordon Highlanders. He was killed in France on 18th August 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, aged 25. He was the son of the Reverend Walter John Clarke and Mrs Clarke of The Rectory, Kelso and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Thiepval, Somme, France. He had been educated at Kelso High School and Ellesmere College Shropshire. In 1911 He had joined the 4th Battalion, Royal Scots ( Queens Edinburgh Rifles ) a Territorial Unit before going to Malaya. Here he joined the Malay States Volunteers before returning home on the outbreak of war. He trained with the Public Schools Battalion before joining the 11th Gordons and then going to France. The photographs show Scottish troops on the Somme and the colourv image shows a peaceful Somme landscape today with “no gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now”.

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