Month: April 2017

Serjeant Malcolm MacFarlane

~ Nick Metcalfe ~ Leave a comment

This is part of a series of essays about the First World War casualties commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in Pennsylvania.

Serjeant Malcolm MacFarlane

Serjeant Malcolm MacFarlane died during the influenza pandemic while serving in Philadelphia with the British and Canadian Recruiting Mission.

He was born on 20 June 1889 at Newington in Edinburgh, the youngest of the six children of James and Janet MacFarlane.[1] The family had lived in Linlithgow, where James MacFarlane worked as a grocer and where the first five children were born, before moving to Newington sometime in the 1880s. His father found work there as a stationary steam engine driver and when Malcolm left school, he went to work as a graphical draughtsman for the well-known cartographers John Bartholomew & Son Ltd. Continue reading →

Private Grant Edward Freye

~ Nick Metcalfe ~ Leave a comment

This is part of a series of essays about the First World War casualties commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in Pennsylvania.

The grave of Grant Edward Freye

Private Freye posed something of a conundrum given the variations of his age and name that appear in his service and other records and on his grave stone. He did not serve for long, only 2½ months, before he succumbed to the severe effects of appendicitis, aged only 17.

The name under which he served was a variation of the spelling of his family name. Early records show the name as ‘Fry’, later his mother and father used the name ‘Frey’. He also gave false details upon enlistment for his date of birth—common for those underage. Continue reading →

Second Lieutenant George Albert Ruffridge

~ Nick Metcalfe ~ Leave a comment

This is part of a series of essays about the First World War casualties commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in New Jersey.

The grave of Albert Ruffridge

George Albert Ruffridge (known as Albert) was born on 21 December 1892 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the second of the two sons of George and Hattie Ruffridge who moved with the family to Montclair, New Jersey sometime in the first decade of the new century.[1]

Second Lieutenant Albert Ruffridge

Like his father, Ruffridge worked as a salesman before he enlisted in Toronto on 21 November 1917 into the Royal Flying Corps for training as a pilot (152810 Cadet). After completing his initial training in Toronto and Texas, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 6 April 1918, five days after the formation of the Royal Air Force, and joined No. 80 Canadian Training Squadron at Camp Bordon to complete his gunnery training. Continue reading →