Today is the centenary of the death in France of Charles Kirkness of Sandwick.  Most of the 65 Orcadians who died serving in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the Great War were killed, or died of wounds, in the great battles of Second Ypres, the Somme, Arras and Passchendaele, or during the continuous fighting from March 1918 until the Armistice.  However, like the British Army, the Canadians lost a continuous steady trickle of dead, wounded and (mostly in trench raids) missing during "routine trench warfare".  Charles Kirkness died in a "quiet time" in the trenches and his biography has been added tonight to the Sandwick section of the website, or can be downloaded as a pdf directly using the link below.