Sergeant John Robert Black, 16th ( Service ) Battalion, Royal Scots. He was killed in action in France on 9th April 1917 on the first day of the Battle of Arras aged 26. He was the son of James and Margaret Black of Railway Cottages, Darnick, Melrose and is buried in Ste Catherine British Cemetery. Before enlisting with his brother George in November 1914 he had been employed as a stonemason. He had already been wounded on the Somme in August 1916. He fell in the successful advance of the Battalion which captured all its objectives that day. The photograph shows troops and a tank in a captured village near Arras. The 16th Royal Scots was known as “McRae’s Battalion” after Sir George McRae who had raised it in November 1914. It was originally comprised of professional footballers and their fans from Heart of Midlothian, Hibernian, Raith Rovers , Falkirk and Dunfermline.
