SOME 400 Victoria Cross holders were invited in January 1956 to attend the celebrations, that June, marking the centenary of the establishment of the decoration. Among them were 20 Scots or Anglo-Scots, nearly all of whom were veterans of the Great War.
In the Glasgow area there were six VCs, all of whom were decorated during that conflict. Three of them lived in the city: Frederick Luke, 60, of Allison Street; David Ross Lauder, 62 (pictured with his medals), of Corran Street, and Robert Downie, 62 (pictured), of Carleston Road. All three planned to travel to London for the celebrations.
Mr Luke was awarded one of the first V.C.s in the Great War, for saving artillery under heavy fire at Le Cateau during the retreat from Mons in 1914. The medal was presented to him in France by King George V. On Armistice Day, 1919, he was one of the bodyguard, under General Freyberg, V.C., of the Unknown Warrior.
Mr Lauder won the V.C. and its Serbian equivalent during the Dardanelles campaign. As a private in the Royal Scots Fusiliers he threw a bomb which failed to clear a parapet and fell among the bombing party. Mr Lauder localised the explosion by putting his foot on the bomb. He lost a leg as a result.
In the mid-1920s he began working with the night telephone staff of the Post Office. In the Second World War he served with the Home Guard and other voluntary organisations.
Mr Downie gained his V.C. during the Somme campaign in 1916 when, as a sergeant in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, he led an attack on a machine-gun nest which was causing heavy casualties. In 1956 he was a fitter’s mate with the tramways department of Glasgow Corporation; on Saturday afternoons he worked as a cash collector at Celtic Park.
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