Today is the anniversary of the D-Day landings. At 5.23 am on June 6, 1944, naval forces began to bombard German defenses along the Normandy coast. It was the start of the longest of days…We honor all those who sacrificed their lives in the “Great Crusade.” Here is my personal tribute to a Peterhead cousin who was drowned supporting those landings. My prayers go to Alexander and all who died that day. May they rest in peace.

Found at the Chatham Naval Memorial Panel 75, Column 3.

MILNE, A.B. (Able Bodied Seaman). ALEXANDER CLUBB PIRIE, C/JX220210. Royal Navy on H.M.S. Copra* died on 6th June 1944 at age 28.

He was the son of Alexander C. P. and Mary Ann Delgarno (Webster) Milne, of Peterhead, Aberdeenshire.

*HMS Copra was never anything other than a shore base. The names of many recorded lost from HMS Copra because, sadly, the names of the craft they were serving with were not registered at the time of their deaths. The use of HMS Copra on gravestones, in pay books and other service records, confirms that the men concerned were in the Royal Navy and assigned to Combined Operations….. and that they served on and were lost from an unknown landing craft, and nowhere is HMS Copra recorded as a vessel.

In January of 2020, I visited where he is memorialized, the Chatham Naval Memorial in Gillingham, Kent.

My family photographed around 1911. The young girl inset was born in 1913

When I returned from a holiday in Peterhead and Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire, it changed me; I had met previously unknown relatives. I walked the streets my ancestors would have walked; I felt at home there.

My plan on returning was to retire and plan a return to the UK and then spend 2020 in Peterhead. Well, next I retired, we bought a house in a house in Wales and then COVID.

This blog will be the story of my Milne family, starting with Robert Pirie Milne and his wife Isabella Clubb, my great grandparents.