Meet David McNay - The SMRG Team

Another one of those articles where we have to talk about ourselves. This time, it's my turn...

Any excuse to post this photo again...

I have always had an interest in military history of some description: from an early age I remember playing at soldiers with my brother – we had a huge bag of plastic toy soldiers and would arrange battles with them in endless row where they were gunned down in increasing number until there were perhaps only one or two left among a huge pile of the “dead”. Like other children, we would build model planes and hang them from our ceiling and have imaginary dogfights, and we would lap up films like “Battle of Britain” and The Bridge at Remagen”.

As I got older though, my interest faded a little as I pursued other interests. It was only when I began working on my family tree that my military interest was rekindled. The spark of my interest was ignited when my mother and I visited a cemetery in Renfrewshire, looking for an elusive family stone. One finding it we discovered a name on it which was listed as having died in South Africa in 1900.

What had caused a relative to be there at that time? I had a vague idea that the Boer War had been fought at that time, but knew next to nothing of the conflict. I decided therefore to find out more. That in turn led to me trying to find out more about the men from Scotland who didn’t survive the conflict – I was aware that men from the First World War were commemorated but anyone from conflict pre-dating 1914 were almost ignored. That resulted in my starting a project to compile accurate lists of Scotland’s Boer War dead.

I think that’s where my interest in War Memorials came from. I had travelled around photographing the few Boer War memorials there are in Scotland, and I had come to appreciate the styles and designs of different war memorials. From there it was a short step to photographing memorials wherever I saw them.

Around this time I had noticed a post on the Great War Forum from someone working for the Archives of the Royal Bank of Scotland. They had compiled a list of their war dead and were looking for further information. I work for the Bank of Scotland and was curious to find out if my employers had a similar list. I therefore contacted the banks archives and five years later I am still working on completing a list of the war dead of the constituent banks that make up HBOS (as it was at the time, now part of Lloyds Banking Group).

That research led me to cross paths with Adam Brown, who works for RBS and was doing similar work with his employers list. That initial contact has led to a very good friendship and an almost daily email correspondence that covers many projects, ideas, suggestions and outright fantasy of what we’d do if we won the lottery and could jack our jobs in to do research full time!

For me, this sort of research takes military history beyond the bare bones of places, dates and campaigns. For me, history is about the people who lived it; what they did, how they reacted, what they thought. I’m not sure if it’s a quote that I lifted from somewhere, but whenever I am asked why I spend all my time in libraries, compiling lists, I simply say this: these men have stories to tell, and they did not live to tell them. We have to tell the stories for them.

Meet Adam Brown - The SMRG Team

We thought it might be a good idea to publish mini "profiles" of members of the Scottish Military Research Group. That way you get to know a little more about us, what our interests are, and what we're all about. The first "volunteer" is Adam Brown, who some of you may know is one of the administrators of the Group. Together with myself we are responsible for the running of the two main Projects (War Memorials and War Graves) and here Adam explains where his interest in all things military came from.

I am the wrong side of forty and as far back as I can remember I have been interested in military history. It's a long story but I think I can trace it all back to a pack of 1/32nd Airfix British Paratroops given to me when I was about five. I'll not bore you with all the details but thanks to Airfix models, 'Commando' books, and the 'Victor' and 'Battle' comics by the time I was a ten I was daft on the Second World War.

As a teenager my horizons were broadened by 'O' Grade and Higher History topics on the First World War and Nineteenth Century European revolutions and unifications. I also started putting together my own very modest collection of reference books. Growing up in East Sutherland meant any trip to Inverness included a trip to Melven's Bookshop in Union Street which always had a selection of Osprey Men-at-Arms books which were within my pocket money budget.

My student years and the years just after that were not years of plenty so book purchases tended to be from charity shops or car boot sales but it did mean I broadened my horizons further and I would read just about anything on military subjects from the Ancients up until the Falklands and First Gulf war.

That eclectic range of military subjects continues to this day and recent books on my reading pile have included books on Robert the Bruce, the Atlantic Campaign 1939-45, Earl Haig, The Berlin Wall, US Army forts in the 'Wild' West, Maps of Europe 1789 - 1914, and for light relief - Bernard Cornwell's "The Fort". I also subscribe to the BBC History magazine so I've always got a copy of that handy to dip in to.

I can probably trace my interest in war memorials back to the early 1990s. It was then that I first transcribed the names on my local memorial in Brora and started to try and find something about them. I was living 250 miles away from the memorial so I was a regular visitor to the Edinburgh Central Library to pour through old copies of Soldiers Died in the Great War and the CWGC registers. I was young, free and single and living in the Lawnmarket at the time so could visit the library every evening. There was no electronic searches in those days, I just scanned each dusty page looking for a name or a place name. As I came across another local town or place in an entry I would note the name and details down and before I knew it I was researching all the other memorials in Sutherland too. I'm not a genealogist, that doesn't interest me greatly but I am a 'delver'. I like looking through databases and registers and spent many happy hours in the back of the Central Reference Library before home PCs, CD-Roms and the internet changed the way I approached my hobby.

It wasn't just an interest in the names on a memorial though, it was an interest in the memorials as well. Perhaps the statues remind me of the Airfix soldiers from my childhood? Who knows. I guess when it comes down to it like most British males I'm a bit of an anorak but instead of trains or birds I happen to be a war memorial spotter!

SMRG talk - Paisley

Adam Brown will be giving a talk to Renfrewshire Family History Society on the Scottish Military Research Group in Paisley Museum, High Street, Paisely on Thursday 15th October at 7.30pm.

Please come along and provide some moral support for him!