STRATHBLANE WW1 PROJECT: 1 JOHN YOUNG BARR, LIEUTENANT ARGYLL & SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS, AGED 23.
“Some of Jack’s men, anxious to pay a last tribute to their commander, whom they all loved and admired, carried his body to a position at the back of the trench where I had dug a grave.”
From the letter of condolence written to Jack’s mother two days after his death by his friend Eric Yarrow.
John Young Barr, aged 23, a lieutenant in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and known to friends and family as “Jack”, is the first name to appear on Strathblane War Memorial. His portrait in uniform shows a serious, straightforward-looking young man without affectation. He has dark eyes and a small neat moustache. He is also one of the men we know most about, for two reasons.
Firstly, Jack makes a number of appearances in the extensive archive of diary entries, letters and photographs of his close friend, near neighbour and fellow officer, Eric Yarrow. As it happens, in the alphabetical list of names on the memorial, Jack is the first and Eric the last and yet the two men died in the same battle – the Second Battle of Ypres – less than a fortnight apart. In this knowledge, even rereading them a century later, Eric’s letters of condolence to Jack’s family are simply heartbreaking.
Secondly, Jack was the son of the brilliant engineer and inventor, Professor Archibald Barr, who with physicist William Stroud, developed and patented an optical rangefinder that was adopted by nearly all the world’s navies. The two went into business together and in 1904 opened a large purpose-built factory at Anniesland in the outskirts of Glasgow: Barr and Stroud. In 1913, Prof Barr resigned his chair at Glasgow University to concentrate on design work and remained chairman until his death in 1931. Long afterwards the company continued to provide periscopes for the Royal Navy and devices such as thermal imaging equipment to the British army. Barr and Stroud were truly game-changers in the defence industry. Their technology lives on today in the French-owned Thales military equipment factory at Govan, which produces rangefinders and thermal imaging equipment for military vehicles and aircraft.
Prof Barr, who hailed from the Paisley area, had married Isabella Young in 1885, daughter of a local wood merchant. Hence Jack’s middle name. He was born in February 1892, the second of three sons, at Royston, the family’s villa in Queen’s Place, Dowanhill. There was also a daughter, Morag, and a child who did not survive. In the 1901 Census, Jack appears as a nine-year old “scholar”. At this time he was a pupil at Kelvinside Academy.
Around 1908 the family moved to Westerton of Mugdock (now divided into flats), where they enjoyed entertaining guests and throwing parties in the grounds in summer. Archibald had a reputation as a convivial and witty host. In 1911 the professor became the first president of Strathblane Village Club, which had been donated by shipbuilder A F (later Sir Alfred) Yarrow and is still going strong. The Yarrows, including son Eric, must surely have been on the guest list for some of those jolly summer parties at Westerton. And one can easily imagine the Barr family being invited to gatherings organised by the Yarrows at Campsie Dene House, their home in Blanefield.
From 1907 to 1911, Jack was a boarding pupil at Rossall School at Fleetwood in Lancashire, where he was a member of the gymnastics and fives teams and went on to become School Captain. He was also a senior NCO in the Rossall Officer Training Corps. In 1911 he became an undergraduate at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he won the dux prize for French, graduated with honours in History in 1914 and served two years in the Oxford University Cavalry.
At the outbreak of World War I Jack obtained a commission as second lieutenant in the 7th Battalion Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and, as the Stirling Sentinel newspaper reported, during his short period fighting in France was promoted for bravery on the field.
By this time Jack had met up with a welcome familiar face from Strathblane: Eric Yarrow, by now a Cambridge undergraduate. Along with a third officer, Gifford Moir from Alloa, the men became close friends, styling themselves as “the Three Musketeers”. All three were lieutenants in the same regiment. If depictions of trench warfare in Flanders seem unremittingly grim to the modern reader, it is hard to guess that from the way Yarrow characterised the capers of the Three Musketeers.
A photograph dated December 14 1914 shows the three of them, all sporting their glengarry bonnets and cheerfully practising trench-digging near St Omer. Barr’s kilt is visible beneath his army greatcoat. The trenches for real were less of a laughing matter. On January 12, Yarrow reports: “Moir and Barr (the two who with me make up “the Three Musketeers”) and I went to the trenches last Friday night”. They had difficulty sleeping because the dugouts were flooded and rats “played havoc in the straw”.
Yet by April 5, despite spending four days on and four off in the trenches, Yarrow records in his diary: “Moir, Barr and I ride into Armentieres fairly often and manage to get a glimpse of our friends.” It is accompanied by another jolly photograph of the three smiling comrades on horseback in the town. The handsome young trio look as if they have not a care in the world.
Within barely a month all three would be dead.
Jack Barr died on April 25 1915, at St Julien, just north-east of Ypres, leading his men into battle. As it happens, this is near the spot where the Germans had first resorted to using poisonous gas on April 22 but that is not how Jack died. In a six-page letter of condolence to Jack’s mother, Isabella, Eric Yarrow lays out the facts:
“Jack was killed leading his men into the thickest part of the action. Those who saw Jack say that he led his men brilliantly and with great courage and it is characteristic of his stout heart that, though wounded, he continued to lead his men until they with him fell victims of the machine gun, which killed them instantly.
“At night fall I went out and found Jack’s body in a well-advanced position a few yards in front of those of his men who had been killed with him. Some of Jack’s men, anxious to pay a last tribute to their commander, whom they all loved and admired, carried his body to a position at the back of the trench where I had dug a grave. Late at night, amid the shriek of shells passing overhead, the groans of wounded and the noise of men passing to and fro, we laid Jack’s body to rest and erected on his grave a small cross which was lit up by the light from a burning farm.”
Yarrow imagines how sad the Barrs must be at home in Westerton and promises to send on the contents of Jack’s pockets. He ends by describing his friend as “one of the bravest and noblest of God’s sons”.
Gifford Moir was killed on the same day. Reports of both deaths appear in the same column of the Stirling Sentinel of May 4.
On May 7, clearly in reply to a letter from her, Yarrow wrote to Jack’s sister Morag. Though he says he is glad that her parents have borne their loss so bravely, this is a gloomier letter in which he contrasts the shattered landscape of Flanders with the beauty of the Blane Valley: “The neighbourhood with burning farms and uncultivated fields shows life at its worst and under these conditions, sorrows are I think easier to bear than under conditions of beauty such as the valley in spring. Often as I sit in my dug-out, I picture to myself your pretty house and beautiful garden and the contrast with the devastated countryside out here is very sad because although the walls of our fair homes stand intact, in so many cases the hearts of the inhabitants are broken.”
Eric Yarrow (see number 25) was killed in action the following day. The area was taken by the Germans and not recaptured until July 1917.
In 1918, Archibald Barr refused a knighthood for services to the allied war effort on the basis that he had only done his duty and others had given so much more without recognition. Perhaps he had in mind not only his own son Jack but also the 35 Barr and Stroud employees killed in action. (Robert Rigg (see Ch 20), the son of Prof Barr’s chauffeur, was killed less than a month after Jack.)
As well as being awarded the 1914/1915 Star, Jack Barr’s brief life and tragic death are commemorated on the Ypres Memorial at the Menin Gate and gravestones in both Paisley’s Woodside Cemetery and Strathblane Churchyard. And his name appears on no fewer than four war memorials: Strathblane, Milngavie, Kelvinside Academy and finally Christ Church College, Oxford, under the legend: “Ye shall remember the men of this house who died for their country.”