A hundred years after Britain declared war on Germany, a Scots singer has revealed how her Boy Scout uncle ran away to join the army at just 14 years old.
Private Dickson grew up in Dunfermline, the eldest son in a large family and the uncle of the singer Barbara Dickson.
His family managed to get him back after revealing his true age, but he left a second time and died aged 16 during the Battle of the Somme.
A letter from his father asking the commanding officer to withdraw him from the front line arrived two days after his death.
“All the family never said a word about David because granny just couldn’t face it,” Barbara told STV News.
“She could not face it. There was a photograph in a frame that hung above the piano in her best room, but I was told when I was very young not to ask granny about that.”
A contemporary newspaper report said that Private Dickson had been an enthusiastic Boy Scout and “early enamoured of a soldier’s life.”
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