Cllr Norrie Work took the opportunity of the full council meeting on Thursday to advise councillors that Patricia Leroy, Mayor of Contalmaison, a small village in France, had died.
The Lord Provost said he would send a letter of condolence.
Edinburgh has strong links to the village which has maintained a cairn in memory of soldiers who died there during World War One, and Cllr Work has represented the city at the annual remembrance service.
The 15th and 16th Royal Scots went into action on 1 July 1916. The 16th was famously called ‘McCrae’s battalion’ after the charismatic Lieutenant-Colonel Sir George McCrae, who rallied the men of the Edinburgh to enlist beside him. During their advance on German defensive positions on the opening day of the Somme they lost more than three quarters of their strength. Those who survived regrouped at the French village of Contalmaison, where a Scottish cairn was erected in 2004.
Madame Leroy visited Edinburgh when Cllr Wilson was Lord Provost and he too remembered her fondly:
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