John Robert Munro was born in Lairg, son of James and Georgina Munro of Lairg, Sutherlandshire. Sutherland Transport employed him as a lorry driver in Lairg; his family and friends knew him as Jackie. The family lived and worked at Gubernuisgach; when John was a child his mother died at the family home two days after giving birth to twins. A few days later John’s father, James travelled to Durness on his horse and cart, to register the birth of the twins and the death of his wife.

Whilst in Durness he met a man he knew and they both had a drink together before James set off back to Gubernuisgach. He was found dead the following day, his horse had also died; the man who James had been drinking with was also found dead in his house.

Mrs Henrietta Mackenzie, the mother of the Mackenzie family from Lairg who had lost three sons and a daughter in World War One, brought up John and the twins after the death of their parents. At the outbreak of World War Two, John a member of the Territorial Army was called up by the Royal Army Service Corps.

He served in the North Africa campaign as the British fought the German Afrika Corps and Italians in the desert. His job as a driver in the Royal Army Service Corps was that of re-supply and he would of drove long hours taking supplies from the rear areas to the front.

Driver John Munro was killed in action in North Africa on the 23 of December 1942 at the age of thirty-nine. His name appears on both Melness and Lairg War Memorials.