The Toy Soldier and Parachute
One of the precious objects Mairi left before she passed away on 1981 was a toy soldier attached to a parachute which Jack Petre had tossed to her out of his plane – one of many love tokens he threw down during the Great War.
Jack Petre was an airman in World War One; Mairi’s ‘special friend’ whom the Chisholm family said she would have married if he had survived the war.
Sadly he was killed in a flying accident in the spring of 1917.
Further information can be found in Diane Atkinson's book Elsie and Mairi Go To War.