Sergeant George Douglas, “E” Battalion, Tank Corps. He was killed in action in France, aged 40, on the 20th November 1917 on the first day of the Battle of Cambrai. He had been born in Selkirk in 1877 and was the husband of Lydia Douglas of 13 West Mayfield, Edinburgh who he had married in 1903 in South Africa. He is commemorated on the Cambrai Memorial, Louveral, Cambrai, France. He had been employed as a foreman gardener in Edinburgh when he enlisted in the 2nd/3rd Scottish Horse Yeomanry where he served as an instructor of musketry. He then volunteered for front line service and was posted to the Tank Corps. The Battle of Cambrai was the first tactical use of a massed tank attack on good ground and it succeeded in breaking through the German lines to a great depth. The photo shows one of the tanks in close up.
