Private George Miller

Private George Edward Miller, 5th ( Service ) Battalion, Cameron Highlanders. He was killed in action in Belgium on 12th October 1917 during the Third Battle of Ypres, aged 32. He had been born in Duns and was the son of Sarah Evans and the late George Edgar Miller, grocer of Duns and the husband of Anna Robina Roy Miller of Bowen Street, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A. and is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, Belgium. He had already been wounded in April 1917. His mother received a letter from a chum who had been in the same Lewis gun team saying they had gone over the top together but George had been killed almost at once. Before enlisting in August 1914 he had been apprenticed to Mr Brown of Market Square and had then gone to work in Glasgow where he had enlisted in the Camerons. He was educated at the Berwickshire High School and is also commemorated on the Memorial Tablet placed in the new Berwickshire High School, Duns. The photographs give some idea of the dreadful conditions on the battlefield. Incessant shelling had destroyed the drainage systems in Flanders and the heavy autumnal rains turned the ground into a desolate quagmire.  The third photograph shows an alert Lewis gun section. The colour photo shows the impressive Memorial raised to the men of the 9th and 15th ( Scottish ) Divisions who fell during the Battle. The 5th Camerons were part of the 256th Brigade in the 9th Division. It was erected on the Frezenberg Ridge near the village of Zonnebeke in the Ypres Salient and was unveiled in August 2007. A plaque in both Gaelic and English is affixed to the front of the Memorial and contains a quote from the Declaration of Arbroath.

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