In the summer of 2013, in response to a paragraph in the local paper, a group of interested locals gathered in the West Lothian Local History Library on Linlithgow High Street to discuss a proposed project to research Linlithgow's 'home front' during the First World War. From those discussions the Linlithgow in the Great War Group was established 'to tell the stories of the people, businesses and town of Linlithgow on the home front during the 1914-19 Great War'. The intention was to use the microfilm archives of the Linlithgowshire Gazette held in the library as the primary research source and to write up the findings for inclusion on Edinburgh University's Scotland's War website through the centenary years of the conflict. In the subsequent five years things have changed: individual members came and went, additional sources of information were explored, the University unexpectedly closed their website project, the volume of material expanded, and the idea for this book emerged and took hold. Back in August 1915, an old lady living at the west end of Linlithgow died at the great age of 101. Mrs Jessie Yorkstoun was born during the Peninsular War and died during the Great War. Still living in Linlithgow today are several centenarians - born during the Great War and still alive to witness the centenary commemorations of 2014-2018. Together they remind us just how distant and yet how close the Great War is - only one lifetime away, but we live in a vastly different world.

Yet human nature does not change and in the struggles of Linlithgow residents 100 years ago to cope with the privations and sufferings of war, we can find echoes of the troubles and concerns of our own times - poverty, health inequality, injustice, bureaucracy, anti-social behaviour, faith, immigration and refugees, pacifism and what constitutes a just war. Other aspects of their lives we can hardly imagine: four and a half years of suffering, slaughter and bereavement - sometimes multiple bereavements in one family. From Linlithgow burgh alone, some 130 gave their lives in the war. But Linlithgow residents bore it all with stoicism: humour kept breaking through, whether it was the poacher who foresaw his story would be read in the local papers 100 years on; or eating chocolate pudding made of potatoes, and beetroot camouflaged as glacé cherries. The First World War was a terrible period in history, which no one would want to re-visit. But it's fascinating to read of the people of Linlithgow wholly engaged in the war effort, from the oldest to the youngest, tirelessly fundraising, struggling to feed their families and keep their businesses going in the face of great difficulties and endless bureaucracy. We deplore the slaughter, the injustices and the class divisions, but we can applaud their efforts to create a more fair and equal society, where everyone, rich or poor, was entitled to the same amount of food, was under the same obligation to serve in the forces; and where women had access to the same job opportunities as men. The men and women of 1914-18 Linlithgow did not get it all right, and in the postwar period many of the old injustices reappeared, but it was a fine example of what a fully committed and actively involved community could achieve.