The War Poets at Craiglockhart

Tragedy was to strike the Carmichael family a further twice before the war would end. Word would soon reach the family that Henry's nephew Donald Bayne (or Donnie) Carmichael had been killed on 16 August 1917 in Ypres, Belgium while fighting with the Royal Field Artillery. Eight months later Henry's grandson, John Henry Carmichael or Jack, as he was known to the family was also killed at Ypres. He died on 17 April 1918.

Perhaps the greatest irony in the lives of the Carmichael family was that, while Henry spent his days gardening at the War Hospital, in the midst of many men, tortured by what they had experienced of the horror of war, two of his own family would also return badly affected by what they had endured while at war. Henry's other nephew James Stirling Carmichael,

who had eagerly joined the Black Watch at the outbreak of war returned home badly shell shocked and was never well again. Noise was an anathema to him and he would often disappear into the quiet of the surrounding countryside and would have to be brought home after several nights sleeping rough. Henry's ninth child Alexander also returned home after serving with the Black Watch. Alexander had been taken as a prisoner of war and had to endure terrible conditions, which caused him continual health problems in later life. He suffered for the rest of his life from the deprivation he had endured in a German Prisoner of War camp and afterwards spent his working life assisting his brother Robert in the gardens of Craiglockhart.