Dundee and The Second World War

Morgan Academy Roll of Honour 1939-1945.

From the original Phamphlet, in the Lamb Collection, Dundee Central Libraries

Morgan Academy Roll of Honour

AT the unveiling of the War Memorial for those former pupils and members of staff of Morgan Academy who lost their lives in the 1914-1918 war, Dr. Leighton, then Rector of the school, recalled that about 650 of their number went to fight for the homeland and that of these 118 were killed or died from the effects of war. The Earl of Airlie in his subsequent address said that no edifice of brick or stone could ever even suggest one-tenth of their feeling towards those who died, but that the memorial would serve as a continual reminder, not only to those present, but to future generations, of the debt they owed to those who gave their lives in the great war.

Our debt to these men still remains, but it would appear that to the reminder, as to similar reminders up and down the country and in many other lands throughout the world, we have paid too little heed. Despite the yearly pilgrimages to our shrines there is little doubt that we, in common with mankind generally, had forgotten their significance or else had too dimly comprehended their meaning, so that we see the world torn once more from the impact of a new and more terrible war and suffer now the aftermath of misery, disease, suspicion.

In this World War II., from 1939 to 1945, from this one school 150 women and 987 men answered the call of battle, and of that latter number 96 paid the supreme sacrifice. To this must be added, though it is an incalculable factor, the sum of broken careers, broken lives, broken bodies. Such is the price that has been paid in part, in part must still be paid.

But this tragedy, this sorrow and suffering, this travail of the world, is it all in vain? It must not be, but only will not be if each of us who remain, pupils and teachers, men and women throughout the world, dedicate pur gifts and lives to that nobler conception of life of which those who served and those who died surely had experience. We must see in life something to which we must give, as well as something from which we take, a time to serve and a time to be served. Let us remember the story of the ten talents and abandon for all time our reluctance to examine our responsibilities and to shoulder them. Only then will a better, wider freedom exist, only then will those who died not have died in vain.

The names on the Roll of Honour for 1939-1945 World War (pdf file)

Iain D. McIntosh, Friends of Dundee City Archives

Iain D. McIntosh, 2022