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Testaments of the fallen
‘IF I get killed, you will have all my belongings to come. It will be a good bit… I think I am all right for coming home safe, as I have been lucky up till now.”
But Private James Tracey’s luck didn’t hold and, on 12 July 1915, two months after he wrote those lines, he was killed in action at Noyelles-lesVermelles in France. Tracey, a private in the 13th Hussars, was writing to his mother in Leith in a letter which also expressed his concern at the hundreds of men of the 7th (Leith) Battalion Royal Scots killed in the Gretna rail disaster of May 1915 – “Dear mother, you have no idea how sorry I feel for those poor helpless young fellows who died, pinned beneath the wreckage.” for more click here
