Alexander Buchanan Gilchrist, Sergeant/CSM Reserve Canadian Infantry, aged 30.
On June 6 1906 Passenger Number 192 boarded the Allan Line’s SS Carthaginian in Glasgow bound for Montreal with the dream of starting a new life for himself in rural Canada. This nineteen year old joiner was Alexander Buchanan Gilchrist, who had been born at Netherton, Blanefield, on March 7 1887. Little did he know that eleven years after leaving his homeland he would be returning as a member of his adopted nation’s expeditionary force in very different circumstances and to a Europe torn asunder by war.
His birth registration confirms his parents as Alexander Gilchrist and Jane Buchanan, who had been married at Kirkhouse, Strathblane in February 1866. Alexander certainly would have known William Rankin McLintock, who was born in the Netherton area the year before him and whose father managed the calico printworks where Alexander Sr worked as a foreman machine printer. And the two young men both emigrated to Canada in the decade before the First World War. The 1891 Census shows that Alexander was the youngest of eight children, comprising four girls and four boys. All the children were born in the parish of Strathblane. By the standards of the time, their home was substantial, having six rooms with at least one window.
In the following decade the family was dogged by misfortune. In 1895 Alexander’s eldest brother George, a chemist at the printworks, died of gastritis, aged only 28. His friends from Strathblane YMCA clubbed together to place a book-shaped stone memorial in the churchyard. Less than three years later their father died, aged 64, from a similar condition, suggesting either a congenital problem or the occupational hazard of their employment at the printworks. The 1901 Census finds Alexander as a 14-year old schoolboy, living in the Partick area of Glasgow with his widowed mother and four of his siblings.
Little is known of Alexander’s early years in Canada but on his attestation paper, dated November 11 1915, signed in his home town of Moosomin, South East Saskatchewan, he declared himself as a widower, a farmer and a Presbyterian. He confirmed Strathblane as his birthplace, and sister Catherine McCulloch Gilchrist of 7 Fairlie Park, Partick, as next of kin. It is unclear why he gave his date of birth as March 7 1892, thereby reducing his age by exactly five years from 28 to 23. The enlistment officer confirmed his height as 6ft, with an expanded chest measurement of 39 inches, fair hair and blue eyes.
Alexander chose to join the 229th (South Saskatchewan) Battalion of the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force (CEF), whose Commanding Officer was to become Lieutenant Colonel Henry Davidson Pickett, a barrister from Moose Jaw. Part of the Battalion’s preparation was spent at Camp Hughes, Carberry, Manitoba, which become an important base for the CEF, having replicated the trench systems from the Western Front in the vain hope of providing a realistic training environment for the departing troops. (Nothing could have prepared these men for the hell of the Western Front.)
Finally, on April 18 1917, the 17 officers and 526 men of the 229th (South Saskatchewan) Battalion embarked from Halifax on the Clyde-built SS Northland. Alexander and his comrades arrived at Liverpool on April 29 and were immediately transported south to Bramshott, Hampshire, a large Canadian training camp and military hospital. Shortly after their arrival the 229th was notified of its integration into the 19th Reserve (Central Ontario) Battalion, which was already in France and had been heavily involved in the recent conquest of Vimy Ridge (part of the Battle of Arras). It was the first time in its history all four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force had been assembled to fight the Germans and it achieved most of its objective in the initial attack. As a consequence, the engagement has become a symbol of Canadian military success and sacrifice. On April 9 each year Canadians still celebrate Vimy Ridge Day.
However, Alexander Gilchrist never got to France. On June 22, at the age of 30, he died from what the record describes as “non-combat causes”. The Saskatchewan Virtual War Memorial confirms he succumbed to peritonitis and an abscess of the liver; a similar gastrointestinal-related illness to that which had done for both his brother and father. This suggests a congenital vulnerability. For his family back in Glasgow it was the second blow in as many months: Alexander’s 71-year old mother had passed away on May 21. Alexander Buchanan Gilchrist is commemorated on the family gravestone and the parish church’s Roll of Honour in Strathblane, as well as the war memorial in Moosomin, Saskatchewan. However, he is actually buried in Bramshott (St Mary) Churchyard, Hampshire, alongside his fellow countrymen who also died at the No.12 Canadian General Hospital, which served the Camp.
Alexander’s gravestone merely deepens the mystery surrounding his age. His actual age when he died was 30. If his lifespan was calculated from the (incorrect) information provided on his attestation documents, it should be 25. Yet the date on his immaculate Commonwealth War Graves Commission tombstone in Hampshire is 27. There is a postscript to this story. Alexander Gilchrist’s death was not only terrible news for his family in Glasgow and friends in Strathblane. When he had enlisted at Moosomin in 1915, Alexander described himself as a widower. But though he had lost his wife very early in his marriage, it transpires that they had a young son, John Alexander Gilchrist, left an orphan by his father’s death. Later John was to follow in his father’s footsteps by volunteering to serve his country, again in Northern Europe, in the Second World War. He not only survived the war to return to Moosomin but was decorated for his war service. In the Military, Medals, Honours & Awards (1812-1969) section of the Library & Archives of Canada it records the award of a ‘Commander-in-Chief Certificate for Good Service’, issued in the UK to a Sergeant J A Gilchrist, dated December 15 1944.
(*Alexander is listed as a Company Sergeant Major in the Strathblane records but simply as a Sergeant elsewhere. Though he never made it to a war zone, that alone would not have disqualified him from consideration for Strathblane War Memorial. Two men on the memorial, Private James Cartwright and Trooper Donald McIntyre, both died during training. A more likely reason for his omission is that there was nobody left in Strathblane to put his name forward, despite the two heartfelt words inscribed on the base of his gravestone at Bramshott: “Ever Remembered”.)