Learning from a gravestone

A student at Oxford in the halcyon pre-war days....

Admitted at a young age to the Society of Writers to His Majesty's Signet - arguably one of the oldest professional bodies internationally, formed in the 16th Century.

The Society is an independent society of Scottish solicitors.

Called to war and served in the Royal Garrison Artillery - developed from fortress-based artillery located on British coasts. From 1914 when the army possessed very little heavy artillery it grew into a very large component of the British forces. It was armed with heavy, large calibre guns and howitzers that were positioned some way behind the front line and had immense destructive power.

And died in Winchester in November the year the war ended. Almost certainly of the Flu. The pandemic lasted from June 1918 to December 1920 spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. Between 50 and 100 million died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.

The last paragraph is a bit of an educated guess - but that's what reading gravestones is all about!

EDIT: But the guess was wrong! Subsequent research found -
"Mr. Peter McPhail, born at Balnasuim, Lawers, a prosperous merchant in Edinburgh, gave the sum of £2,000 in 1919 to the Kenmore Nursing Association to form a memorial of his only son, Lieutenant P. J. Stewart McPhail, R.G.A., who died in hospital at Winchester, 26th November, 1918. The Marquis of Breadalbane at the same time intimated his intention to grant a perpetual title to the Association for the cottage occupied by the nurse in the village of Kenmore; and the Association has since been called "The Stewart McPhail Memorial Nursing Association." Mr. Peter McPhail died at Craigmillar Park, Edinburgh, 11th September, 1921.

It seems that young Stewart died of pneumonia following war wounds.