FAMILY AND SOLDIERS GATHER TO HONOUR "GREAT" OFFICER

The above is the headline from the Dundee Courier earlier this year and below is the text of the article.

SOLDIERS PAST and present gathered at a north Fife estate yesterday to recognise the courage of an army officer who fought and in one of the fiercest battles of the second world war.

Over 80 guests, including 30 ex-Scots Guards, paid their respects in the grounds Birkhill House, near Balmerino, as a tree was planted to honour the memory of Lieutenant Colonel David Scrymgeour-Wedderburn, DSO, who died aged 31 at the beaches of Anzio, Italy, in 1944.

Amongst those present were three old soldiers who served alongside him in the Scots Guards, as well as his widow, Patricia, Countess of Dundee.

A special tribe was paid by Colonel Johnny Clavering, chairman of the Scots Guards Association, who said that his research had shown the lieutenant colonel to be a "special person and a great soldier" in the very best traditions of the regiment.

David Scrymgeour-Wedderburn, who would have been 88 on April 2^nd, was born and raised at Birkhill House and his family have a long and distinguished association with the Fife and Dundee area going back centuries.

Described as a "very perfect Scottish gentleman" and renowned for his inspiring loyalty and confidence, he was commissioned into the Scots Guards on September 1 1932 and posted to the second Battalion at Windsor, later moving to Palestine.

His next appointment was Equerry to the Duke of Gloucester, Colonel of the Scots Guards, after which he joined the 1st Battalion in September 1939, and embarked with them for operations in Norway.

Over the following years he served for periods with the special forces, the 3^rd tank battalion of the regiment, the Training Battalion, and the 4th Battalion, before being posted in December 1943 to the 1st Battalion in Italy who were preparing for the landing at Anzio.

David Wedderburn assumed command of the battalion on January 8 shortly before the troops landed six miles north of Anzio in the initial assault.

He always wore his beret and never a helmet and would carry his deer stalker stave as if were treading his native moors.

For the next month the battalion was in the thick of the fighting to establish and hold the bridgehead and it was during this period that David Wedderburn earned his DSO.

On February 26, 1944, the battalion - now reduced to little more than company strength - was withdrawn to a rest area where the glad news was received that the battalion was to leave the bridgehead.

But on February 27 two shells landed on battalion headquarters, killing four officers, the commanding officer's driver, and critically wounding the commanding officer.

He died from his wounds shortly after midnight on February 29. The loss to the battalion was summed up in a letter from the commanding officer of the Irish Guards, which read, "The whole Division is absolutely miserable, the general and senior staff officers left the battle to pay their last respects when they buried him. He had done wonders for the battalion, his own personal success was outstanding - it is so wicked to think he got over all these dangers to catch it back here."

He left behind his wife and two young daughters, Janet and Elizabeth, and yesterday his grandson, David Fox.Pitt, told The Courier how fitting it seemed to honour the man after all these years.

Mr Fox.Pitt said, "When he was killed he never had a proper funeral in Scotland and at the time his daughters were just one and two years old.

"They have grown up hearing the stories but never knowing who he was. It is particularly good for his Grandchildren - including myself - to know about the sacrifice he, and others like him made in the war - otherwise, who can say we wouldn't have been walking around here today with German accents!"

Yesterday's ceremony comes just a year after the full opening of the Beachhead War Museum in Anzio, near Rome, which pays tribute to the bravery of British servicemen in the beachhead landings.