Cpl. Donald J. B. Munro
British Army 2nd Btn. Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders
from:Fort William, Inverness
During most of WWII my mother and I lived with my grandparents in a large flat in the American University at Cairo(A.U.C.). My grandfather, Charles C. Adams, was at that time Dean of Oriental Studies at A.U.C. The door was always open, and the enormous dining room table perpetually seated at least a dozen people for mid-morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and supper: many were servicemen (almost all "other ranks") from allied forces. My grandmother kept a Visitors Book from 1941 to 1948; Cpl. Munro's signature appears several times in 1942, '43 and '44.
I am much troubled by a circumstance I have never been able to clarify or resolve. At some point, Cpl. Munro's kilt came into my mother's possession. She was a first-rate seamstress and tailor, and in due course the kilt was transformed into matching kilt-shaped skirts for my mother and me (mine was tiny, as I was a skinny 9-year-old. The amount of material in a kilt is astonishing!). I didn't know until many years later that women were not supposed to wear the kilt. My mother may have known and simply disregarded this tradition. Much later, I was told that, after Dunkirk, the Cameron Highlanders never wore their kilts into battle. I haven't found verification of this. But it did suggest a possible explanation of how my mother came into possession of Munro's kilt. There was never a relationship with Munro, but I suspected that he had left the kilt with my grandmother when his battalion was posted to the Western Desert, and that he might have been among the casualties or POWs at Tobruk. But after I inherited my grandmother's Visitors Book in 2002, I eventually found that his signature reappears on 6 December 1942 and 3 January 1943, 27 June 1943 and 5 March 1944, this time giving his full home address: 18 Glen Nevis Place, Fort William, Inverness-shire, Scotland.
Long story short: I still have my mother's piece of Cpl Munro's kilt. She preserved the lining with his ID information on the inside. I did write to the War Office in the UK in the 1950s, but was told that Munro's fate would not be revealed to me, as I was not a relative, and that I should just keep the kilt. I am not comfortable with this, and am still trying to find out if our friend had relatives in Fort William who would be willing to accept (most of) his kilt.
