Private Robert Cunningham

Private Robert Cunningham. 5th Battalion, Canadian Infantry. He died from wounds in France, aged 26, on the 26th September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. He had been born in Galashiels and was the son of Robert and Eleanor Cunningham of 245 Sherbourne Street, Toronto and the husband of Eva Cunningham of Fort William, Ontario. His father had had a drapery business in Galashiels before the family emigrated to Canada in 1912. He had been employed as a weighman before enlisting in Fort William in March 1916 joining his Battalion in France in August 1916. He died in the 3rd Canadian Field Ambulance at Albert, Somme and is buried in Albert Communal Cemetery Extension, Somme, France. The photos show Allied troops on the Somme with the colour image showing a peaceful Somme landscape today with ” no gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now”.