236740 WO2. Thomas Monaghan British Army Royal Garrison Artillery from:Scotland My Grandfather, Thomas Monaghan, was born in Stirling in 1879. As a teenager he ran away from home to join up but as he ran only as far as Stirling Castle his mother was able to buy him out. Next time he ran away to Fort William and joined the Garrison Artillery. I know he was posted to Southampton before 1900, went to Hong Kong in 1899, was, I think, in China with the international troops to relieve the siege of Peking, was in Ireland, then Gibraltar and afterwards Bermuda, where he and the family remained until 1919 or 1920. I think he may have been training troops for the Western Front. He never served on the Western Front. I do not know when he was demobbed but he returned to live in Stirling and was later employed at Queen Victoria School, Dunblane.
During WW2 he was a security guard in Birmingham and then returned to Scotland where he died in 1953 of heart disease in Bannockburn. Four of his five sons were regular army and served in WW2 with the Royal engineers. Two later became Majors.
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