During the war Lieut. David McCabe pulled saplings from the mud of no-man’s-land at Passchendaele and sent them home to his father in Perthshire. David died from wounds in 1917 and never returned to see one of these young trees grow on to splendid maturity. The saplings travelled in an ammunition box with a letter which read: “..owing to the amount of shell, rifle and machine gun fire which the place has been subject to, practically nothing is alive which is any taller than the trees I sent ….. some of the fiercest fighting of the war having taken place in their vicinity.” Today David’s tree stands as a magnificent living memorial at Abercairny Estate, Crieff. In summer 2017 a wreath was fashioned from its cones. A team of cadets cycled from Crieff to France to lay it on the grave of Lieut. McCabe.
Evelyn Rainham