Edward Bradshaw Miller-Stirling, Lt Black Watch, aged 26.
Harry James Graham Miller-Stirling, Lt Nigeria Regiment, aged 31.
Edward and Harry Miller-Stirling are commemorated together on a large headstone in the family plot at Strathblane Cemetery but lie in solitary graves in foreign fields. One is in modern day Iraq, the other in Tanzania, a reminder that the Great War was a truly global conflict.
The brothers belonged to a prominent Scottish family whose large family seat, Craigbarnet (now demolished) stood between Strathblane and Haughhead, though neither man was born there. (The estate spanned the border between Strathblane and Campsie parishes. Part of the walled garden is still visible behind Craigbarnet Farm.)
The Miller-Stirling name had evolved when Charles Edward Graham Stirling of Craigbarnet died in 1898 ‘without male issue’. When his daughter Caroline married Commander George Miller, her husband agreed to change his surname to Miller-Stirling.
They had four children. The eldest was Bessie, born in Greenock 1885, Harry was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1886, Eddie in South Queensferry in 1890 and Arthur in Inverness in 1895.
Eddie and Harry were true “Sons of Empire”, destined for the expatriate life before war broke out. Eddie managed a tea plantation in Ceylon, while Harry, an Oxford graduate, joined the Nigerian colonial service. However, neither hesitated to join up once war was declared.
Eddie, a keen hockey player, initially joined the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps but was then appointed to the 69th Punjabis in January 1915 and subsequently fought at the Suez Canal and Gallipoli. A brief spell on the Western Front with the Bareilly-Meerut Division of the Indian Army Corps at the Battle of Loos followed, but he returned to Egypt in November 1915 and then moved to Aden. Once the Turks had retreated, he requested a transfer to the 2nd Royal Highlanders (The Black Watch) in June 1916. He was appointed Lieutenant and was once again deployed against the Turks, this time along the Tigris in Mesopotamia.
Edward took part in the captures of both Kut-el-Amara and Baghdad, and buoyed with this success, the Black Watch chose to consolidate these gains by pursuing the Turks further. On March 14 1917 his Battalion was to clash with the enemy at Sugar Loaf Hill, a ridge and at Mushaidieh Railway Station, approximately 25 miles from Baghdad, where 26-year old Edward sustained fatal injuries.
Eddie’s commanding officer, Colonel A G Wauchope wrote the following letter of condolence to the young man’s father: “You will have heard, long before this reaches you, of the death of your son. He was a most brave officer, much liked by officers and men. He had done some good patrol work for the regiment in the summer, in which he showed both his courage & resource. His loss is a great one to the regiment which he loved so well, & which he always served to the very best of his powers. He fell as a brave soldier, & I believe after he was wounded he suffered little pain. Allow me as his Colonel to offer my deepest sympathy on so great a loss.” His parents also received a telegram from the King and Queen (still owned by the family) stating: “The King and Queen deeply regret the loss you and the Army have sustained by the death of your son in the service of his Country. Their Majesties sympathise with you in your sorrow.” Edward was buried where he fell and commemorated on Panel 25 of the Basra Memorial in Iraq, which, until 1997 was located on the main quay of the naval dockyard at Maqil. However, Saddam Hussein ordered the memorial’s relocation to Nasiriyah, and it has since been declared unfit for purpose. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission holds a two-volume Roll of Honour at its HQ in Maidenhead until the real memorial can be repaired. In addition, Edward is commemorated on the Nuwara Eliya War Memorial in the Central Province of Sri Lanka, close to the High Forest tea planation, Maturata, where he worked, and at Campsie Parish War Memorial in Lennoxtown. He was posthumously awarded the Star (issued by the Government of India), as well as the Victory Medal and British War Medal. He is also commemorated on the Southsea and Eastbourne College Roll of Service (1914-1918) where he was educated. It confirms that prior to sailing to Ceylon Edward attended Aspatria Agricultural College in Cumberland followed by farming experience at Woollerand, Kelso. It recalls that “he was keen on sports of all kinds, particularly rugby football.” The Milngavie & Bearsden Herald in the article entitled “An Officer Dies of Wounds” reports “he was a champion hockey player…and prominent member of the Lennox Castle Cricket Club.” The same M & B Herald article reported inaccurately that his brother Harry was taking part in the campaign in Northern Nigeria with the West African Field Force. In fact, by then Harry was heavily involved in fighting the Germans in East Africa, trying to defeat Lieutenant Colonel Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. This very able German commander had been ordered to make a nuisance of himself by committing British Imperial forces to the campaign, keeping them as far as possible from the Western Front. Because of his exploits, guerrilla tactics, fearsome Askari troops, and ability to outmanoeuvre the British, he became a national hero. Numerous skirmishes between the combined South African and Nigerian troops, under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Jacob van Deventer, and von Lettow-Vorbeck, culminated in the Battle of Mahiwa in October 1917. A heavily outnumbered German force of approximately 1,500 was confronted by 4,900 in what was the largest battle in Africa during WW1 and the last major one in German East Africa. Despite losing over a third of its number, Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s force inflicted 2,700 casualties on the British Imperial troops. Harry’s 1st Battalion Nigerian Regiment was tasked with blocking the enemy on the Mahiwa-Nyangao road, but due to a breakdown in communications on October 16 it became isolated and vulnerable south of Namupa Mission, and was promptly ambushed by the Germans. In his book With the Nigerians in German East Africa, Captain W.D. Pownes described how this was “the most disastrous day for the Nigerians since the formation of the force” and one in which “Captain Stretton and Lieutenant ‘Stirling-Miller'(sic) were killed, and the rank and file suffered most heavy losses.”
Caroline Miller-Stirling never recovered from the loss of her beloved Eddie and Harry, and, like Queen Victoria, wore black to her dying day. Craigbarnet became a very sad place. Her daughter Bessie, who served as a secretary at Craigmaddie Auxiliary Military Hospital, is said to have lost five boyfriends during the war and never married. Harry is commemorated on the British & Indian Memorial, Dar es Salaam, Campsie Parish War Memorial in Lennoxtown, and the South Africa Roll of Honour 1914-1918. He was posthumously awarded the 1914/15 Star, as well as the Victory Medal and British War Medal. The youngest brother, Second Lieutenant Arthur Eustace Stirling Miller-Stirling, served in the Indian Army, attached to the 1st Battalion, Gordon Highlanders, and survived the war. However, he went missing in October 1914 during the Battle of La Bassee, near Lille. According to his army index card, he was erroneously reported “killed in action”, before being confirmed as a prisoner of war at Danholm Camp, Straslund, an island off the German coast, where he remained for the rest of the War. The Miller-Stirling line was to continue through Arthur. His grandson James Graham Nairn Miller-Stirling, born in 1956, continued the family tradition by moving to the Far East and joining Jardine Matheson. He has two sons, Harry and Charlie. Arthur’s granddaughter Diana Miller-Stirling, born in 1959, married Lord Charles Patrick Hugh Fitzroy.
