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Eggs-tra special effort by pupils for wounded soldiers 100 years ago


By Chris Saunderson

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A SCHOOL has reflected on its community spirit in supporting wounded soldiers more than 100 years ago after a surprise find.

The pupils with the certificate from 100 years ago and some eggs from the hens which they still keep today. Back from left Ross Hunter, Tristan Shevill, Alice Rochester, Ellie Edgar and Craig Murray with Ami-Leigh Shevill (front left) and Chloe Nicolson (front right). Picture: Becky Saunderson
The pupils with the certificate from 100 years ago and some eggs from the hens which they still keep today. Back from left Ross Hunter, Tristan Shevill, Alice Rochester, Ellie Edgar and Craig Murray with Ami-Leigh Shevill (front left) and Chloe Nicolson (front right). Picture: Becky Saunderson

Children at Logie Public School contributed eggs to the National Egg Collection during World War One.

That saw up to one million eggs a week sent to wounded troops in France.

The children of Logie Primary in Forres still keep chickens and collect eggs to this day.

Administrator Moira Dennis was sorting out the office when she came across an old school register and tucked inside was a "beautiful certificate".

She said: "Tucked between the pages of an old school register in the office, this beautiful document is a ‘token of gratitude and appreciation to the Teachers and Scholars of Logie Public School’."

The National Egg Collection was an amazing example of community spirit at a time of war. Devised by the editor of Poultry World, it sent at least a quarter of a million and, at its peak, a million eggs in a single week to injured soldiers in hospital in Boulogne.

It was estimated that an egg would reach a wounded serviceman in France within three days of being laid.

All these years later, Logie Primary still keeps chickens: checking the nest boxes is one of the first jobs of the day for the children.

The eggs from Doris and Mabel and four other chickens, are currently handed out as gifts to the six children who visit the school on Fridays, preparing to join P1 in August.

Moira added: "In future, we hope, the eggs will again be used for cakes and quiches, baked by the children for the school’s Community Café. The hens themselves teach the children big lessons about good food, caring, nurturing and – sometimes – about grieving."

It was by chance that the commendation for wartime egg collecting was found on the day the school launched a mini fundraiser. Added Moira: "We want to buy leaving gifts for our six P7 pupils, who’ll be moving on from Logie Primary in just a few weeks, so we’re promoting the last few copies of The Logie 100, a cookbook devised and published during lockdown and built on the strong ties the school still has with former pupils, teachers and the local community.

"It was a very successful fundraiser for us during lockdown, but the recipes within it came to symbolise something much more profound about the connections between us all at a time when we were, by any normal standards, cut off from each other and our usual ways of living.

"Finding out what our friends and neighbours like to cook, thinking of them in their kitchens or round their tables, or reading the stories of their own days at Logie, all brought a sense of community togetherness which was the next best thing to meeting up for a meal."

Moira wonders if the Great War egg collection did something similar.

"The eggs, of course, were good for the wounded soldiers – the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, declaring in 1917 that ‘There is no substitute for eggs in maintaining a man’s vitality, hastening his convalescence or even in preserving life’ – but how did gathering eggs as a community help the teachers, the children (who were particularly encouraged to take part) and their neighbours?

"Did they feel more connected to each other and to the soldiers away from home – some of whom, of course, would never come back?

"The eggs would have brought with them a sense of connectedness between the people who sent them and the men who ate them. I think, in a small way, that The Logie 100 does that too, and gives a sense of what our community needed at a time of crisis."

The final few copies of the Logie 100 are available for £8 at the Art Gallery at Logie Steading or from the school.

The hens presently at Logie came from Nick Rodway, a great friend of Logie Primary, who died recently. His daughter Hannah is a teacher at the school and wife Pam has a close affinity with the school too.

Ross Hunter (11), said: "It was pretty cool, to be honest (finding certificate) – I didn’t know that Logie Primary pupils had done that. And it made me think about how scary it must have been for them, to live at a time when we were in a war.’

Ami-Leigh Shevill (7) added: "I thought, how old is that paper? How has it lasted so long? I think it must have been a big honour for the children to receive the certificate."

Ross and Ami-Leigh were pleased to be involved with the cookbook.

Ami-Leigh said: "The cookbook showed that people can work together really well – and can make friends with people they weren’t friends with before.’

And Ross said: "I was really proud and surprised to see myself in the cookbook. And I made the recipe bigger, so it would feed more people. It was something I had cooked before but never written down."


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