James McKenzie, Private Royal Lancashire Fusiliers, aged 19.
James McKenzie’s family was long established in Strathblane. His father, also James, worked at the waterworks and lived at Dumbrock. His mother Margaret Kennedy, though born in Busby came from an Irish family that had come to Scotland from County Antrim, possibly in the wake of the Irish potato famine, which had affected that area particularly badly. At some stage the Kennedy family moved en mass from Busby to City Row (later New City Row) in Blanefield and Margaret took a job at the local calico printworks. Living close by was her brother William James Kennedy whose son John Kennedy (see Private John Kennedy, RSF) was also killed in the First World War. So John Kennedy and James McKenzie were cousins, although 13 years separated them.
The McKenzie and Kennedy families lived for many years side by side in City Row By 1881 Margaret’s father had died and she was living with her widowed mother plus another four family members and four lodgers. Quite a squash in the cramped accommodation at City Row.
She married James McKenzie in Strathblane in 1892 and had two children there, Alexander born later in 1892 at Netherton and Margaret born at Dumbrock in 1894. James senior’s job at the waterworks presumably came to an end in 1896 with the completion of the second aqueduct from Loch Katrine so the family would have had to leave the village to find employment. They moved to Barrhead where James junior was born in November 1897 and where his father found employment as a foreman in a sanitary works. Later the family moved to Guthrie Street in Maryhill by which time the father was working as a railway miner.
By 1911 the family was back in Barrhead at 124 Cross Arthurlie Street and Margaret was now a widow, working as a machinist. James, though only 13, had found work as a stent watcher. (A stent watcher was someone who worked a cloth manufacturing machine.)
James would have been too young to enlist in 1914. However, under the terms of the 1916 Military Service Act, he would have been conscripted into the forces, having passed his 18th birthday in November the previous year. James enlisted in Barrhead and was posted to the West Yorkshire Regiment but was subsequently transferred to the 2nd/8th Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers at their base at Turton Lancashire. By this stage in the war new recruits such as James were likely to be sent to any unit that had suffered heavy losses and was operating significantly under strength.
The Lancashire Fusiliers had fought in Gallipoli, the Middle East and Africa but by early 1917 they were heading for the Western Front. It is around this time that James must have joined them.
There followed a period of re-equipment and retraining to meet the needs of trench warfare in conditions that would be very different from those experienced in the Middle East. General Haig was determined to press ahead with plans for a major British offensive in late summer, initially to put out of action the German submarine bases on the Belgian coast, which were attacking British merchant ships. Success at Messines in May 1917 was followed by the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) in July.
It has been well documented that the ground conditions at Passchendaele were so atrocious, after weeks of lashing rain and a continuous bombardment, that progress was painfully slow. Passchendaele was an awful experience for the British. They suffered some 310,000 killed, wounded or captured to advance a meagre five miles, consuming all of their reserve forces on the Western Front in the process. The village finally fell on November 6th 1917 but it is unlikely that James knew much about it.
It is reported that James received gunshot wounds to his back at the end of the battle. He may have been the victim of an enemy sniper. He was evacuated to the casualty clearing station at Lijssenthoek where he died of his wounds on Nov 13. He was 16 days short of his 20th birthday.
James is commemorated at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Belgium and on his grandparents’ gravestone in Strathblane churchyard although it wrongly states he died in France.
One small item comes down to us. On October 22 1917, he picked up a pencil and wrote an informal will. It states simply: “In the event of my death I give the hole of my belongings to my Mother Mrs M McKenzie 124 Cross Arthurlie St, Barrhead, Scotland.” Barely three weeks later he was dead. The inscription she chose for his headstone in Belgium reads simply: “TO MEMORY EVER DEAR.”
