Larbert WAR MEMORIAL https://falkirklocalhistory.club/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/larbert-war-memorial.pdf ---

The Scotsman, Monday 25th September 1922 LARBERT CENOTAPH DR M'CLYMONT AND LEAGUE OF NATIONS Many thousands of people witnessed the unveiling at Larbert yesterday the beautiful cenotaph and quadrant erected to the memory of nearly three hundred men who fell in the Great War. The opening proceedings took place in Larbert Parish Church, where a memorial service took place. The sermon was delivered by the Very Rev. J. A. M'Clymont, C.B.E., D.D., Glasgow. Dr M'Clymont, in the course of his address, stated that the League of Nations was only an extension of the law of Christ to international relationships. It was a development of Christianity that was sure to come sooner or later. Though it had been long in coming, they must remember the difficulties which had always beset such objects. At the close of the church service a procession was formed, and headed by a pipe band and a platoon of the 7th A. and S. H. Territorials, marched through the main street to the memorial. At a platform erected at the side of the cenotaph, which was surrounded by a crowd of many thousands of people, the unveiling ceremony performed by Lieut.-Col. Alan Stein, the commanding officer of the 7th A. and S. H. Colonel Stein said that it seemed that after the great struggle they had passed through, a terrible disgrace to civilisation that war should still be possible, and he thought that the time was ripe for the League of Nations to become a real power in settling disputes between nations. Thereafter a dedicatory prayer was offered up by Dr M'Clymont, and the usual military honours were paid to the memory of the fallen.

Falkirk Herald - Wednesday 11 May 1949 Page 5 LARBERT WAR MEMORIAL. 1939-45 plaque unveiled and dedicated. IMPRESSIVE PROCEEDINGS. Lieut.-General Sir Gordon H. A. MacMillan's tribute to yjr war dead. ---

[relating to the WW2 nurse on this memorial]- The SS Tanjong Pinang was a 97 foot converted ‘tug’ trying to make its escape with about 160 women and children on board plus about eight wounded men from Pom Pong Island where they had been shipwrecked; it also had on board five ocean shipwreck survivors who had been plucked from the sea on the day before. Almost all these people were survivors, including many wounded, of the earlier sinking of the SS Kuala which had sailed from Singapore on 13 February and had been bombed by Japanese planes at Pom Pong Island so they had already experienced the horror and pain of one sinking. There is no official record of all those on board but it is thought that there were at least 160 on board and there could have been as many as 208 passengers and 17 crew crammed on the deck and into the hold in the dark of the night of 16 February. There are also numerous Chinese and Eurasian women who are thought to have been on board too but there are no records of their names. The ship left from Pom Pong Island at dawn on 17 February. One crew man said a lifeboat had ferried people from Pom Pong Island to the ship eight times carrying 20 people each time except for the last trip of 12 people. Another crewman said there were 250 passengers on board. The ship was stopped at sea about 30 miles north of the Tanjung Ular lighthouse off Banka Island at about 8.30pm that night by a warning shot across its bows. Whilst some women and children were being lowered in the ship’s only two small boats (there were no real lifeboats), a Japanese submarine or torpedo boat opened fire at point blank range whilst its searchlights were trained on the SS Tanjong Pinang directly hitting the starboard side ship’s boat. The ship sank within five to ten minutes taking down many of the women and children passengers who had been trapped in the hold and cabins. [The CWGC record 85 casualties of this incident]