Private David Morrison

David was born in County Down in the summer of 1881. His father was called Elijah and his mother Eliza.
He attested with the Irish Guards on 19 May 1900, aged 18 years and 11 months. He had a fresh complexion, brown hair, blue eyes, was 5ft 8½ins tall and weighed 116lbs.
After a period at home, he was sent to South Africa in November 1901, where he spent 10 months.
He married Edith May Irvine in Belfast on 1 November 1903. Shortly after he was posted to England and their children were born in various towns such as Caterham, Farnborough, Windsor and Aldershot. They had seven children – David, Edith, Maire, Gladys, who sadly died young, Eileen, Ethel and William and by the 1911 census they were based in Queen’s Road Battersea.
David served with the British Expeditionary Force from August 1914 but he was taken ill at the retreat from Mons with leftside pain and shortness of breath. He was sent back to England but the symptoms persisted. He had suffered from Rheumatic fever as a child but had been passed fit to serve in 1900.
By 1918 he was hospitalized at the Military Hospital, Warley and he was discharged from the army as medically unfit with a condition aggravated by active service. He died on 5 February 1919 and is commemorated on the base of the War Memorial in Streatham Park cemetery.