STRATHBLANE WW1 PROJECT: 13 JOHN MCCULLOCH

War Memorial

STRATHBLANE WW1 PROJECT: 13 JOHN MCCULLOCH, PRIVATE ARGYLL & SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS, AGED 34.

“Private McCulloch was most popular with everyone, being such a cheerful and willing soldier and was greatly esteemed by his comrades.”

Milngavie & Bearsden Herald Nov 16 1917.

Like the only surviving photograph of him, our knowledge of John McCulloch, the 13th name on the war memorial, remains hazy, despite some of his descendants still living locally. The portrait, taken from a group, nevertheless has a haunting quality, with piercing eyes, wide forehead, Edwardian-style centre parting and heavy dark moustache, along with prominent ears and cheekbones. Here is an honest, open face.

He is one of five domestic gardeners on the memorial and one of five Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. He is also one of at least six on the memorial who would lose their lives in 1917 in the hell they called Passchendaele. In fact, he died on the same day in the same battle as Trooper James Robb (see Ch 21).

John lived in the parish of Strathblane for at least four years before enlisting but it is a fair bet that a soft Highland accent betrayed his origins. Though he did not take after his parents in speaking Gaelic, John was born near Inverness and brought up further north in Ross-shire. In September 1882 his father Hugh, 24, a ploughman from Forres, had married Catherine Chisholm, an 18-year old domestic servant at Mains of Croy, a farm eight miles from Inverness. (Today tourists rent stylish eco-lodges there and rave on Tripadvisor about the panoramic views of the Moray Firth and the Black Isle.) The timing of the ceremony narrowly spared John the stigma of illegitimacy, as he was born at Croy barely a month later on October 15.

By the time his sister Catherine came along four years later, the family had moved to Kinnahaird Farm in the beautiful Conon Valley, West of Dingwall. (These days the farm is known for breeding Limousin cattle.) The 1891 Census finds the McCulloch family living in four rooms at Kinnahaird and another daughter, Christina, has appeared. John is now an eight-year old “scholar”.

By the next census, 18-year old John is the eldest of eight children (three boys and five girls) and working as a cattleman at another farm in the same area (Comrie, near Contin). Both his parents are employed on the same farm. A family of ten in four rooms must have been a squeeze and at some point John presumably decided to head for the Central Belt to seek employment nearer the bright lights of Glasgow.

By 1911 we find him working as a gardener and living alone in a bothy on the Craigallian Estate, which belonged to the Barns-Graham family, who still live in the area.

The following year, on March 13, John marries 20-year old London-born domestic servant Emily Fitzpatrick, after banns at the United Free Church in Kinning Park. At the time both give their address as 96 Stobcross St, in the Anderson area of Glasgow but by the time their first child, Hugh, is born the following year, they are back in Strathblane.

By 1915, the Valuation Roll records that John and Emily are living at South Lodge, Craigallian. A second daughter, Catherine Emily, is born the same year.

By this time Craigallian had been let to William Cuthbert Smith Connell and John Campbell Connell, of the Scotstoun-based shipbuilders Charles Connell & Co, which contributed to the war effort by building seven sloops for the Admiralty and 23 merchant ships to help replace the many being lost to German submarine attacks.

This was to be a sadly brief period of married and family life as John was enlisted in Milngavie and was in France from May 1 1915 as a Private in the 10th Battalion of the A&SH. A year later the battalion became part of the 26th Brigade’s 9th (Scottish) Division.

At home in Craigallian, Emily bore their third child in May 1916, a girl called Edith, who must have been conceived during a precious few days of home leave the previous autumn. Did John ever get to hold her?

For a short time at least, Emily and the three children went to London, perhaps taking refuge with her parents, because when John wrote his will in November 1916, their address is given as Chichester Buildings, Tower Bridge Road.

By May 1917 he had survived two years in the trenches with the Argylls. We are told he was well-liked and of a sunny disposition. It is hard to imagine how these men kept smiling (and fighting), despite losing many comrades in the deadly struggle to break through the German lines.  If anything, worse was to come at Passchendaele.

British commander Sir Douglas Haig was determined to break through to Flanders and the coast of Belgium to destroy the German submarine pens. Prime Minister David Lloyd George reluctantly agreed and on July 18 1917 a 10-day artillery barrage of the German lines started, giving the Germans ample warning of a forthcoming attack.

In August the heaviest rain in three decades turned Flanders into a sea of mud. As William Beach Thomas reported in The Daily Mail: “Floods of rain and a blanket of mist have doused and cloaked the whole of the Flanders plain.The newest shell-holes, already half-filled with soakage are now flooded to the brim. The rain has so fouled this low, stoneless ground, spoiled of all natural drainage by shell-fire, that we experienced the double value of the early work, for today moving heavy material was extremely difficult and the men could scarcely walk in full equipment, much less dig. Every man was soaked through and was standing or sleeping in a marsh. It was a work of energy to keep a rifle in a state fit to use.”

Small gains in territory were made in September and early October. Believing German morale was on the verge of collapse, Haig ordered the offensive to continue to the Passchendaele Ridge. From October 9 to 12, the battles of Poelcapelle and the First Battle of Passchendaele were fought.

Rather than being on the point of giving up, the Germans had been bolstered by troops moved from the Eastern to the Western Front and aided by the use of mustard gas.

It was on October 12, in the midst of this fierce battle that John was killed, one of 325,000 Allied casualties in an attack that yielded a few miles of mud. German casualties are estimated at 260,000. Passchendaele village was eventually captured on 6 November 1917. A success of sorts but hardly a victory.

John is commemorated at the Poelcapelle British Cemetery, created after the Armistice when graves were brought in from the surrounding battlefields and other smaller cemeteries. Most of these graves date from the last few months of 1917, and in particular October when John died. Amongst those buried there is John Condon of the Royal Irish Regiment, aged 14 and believed to be the youngest battle casualty of World War I (although there is some doubt as to both his age and burial site).

John McCulloch is also commemorated on the brass plaque later erected in the United Free Church in Blanefield and transferred to Strathblane Parish Church after reunification. On November 16, a small sad item appeared in the Milngavie & Bearsden Herald, under the headline “Local Gardener Killed”: “Mrs McCulloch, 5 Burnside Row, Blanefield, has received official information that her husband, Private J McCulloch, A&SH, has been killed in action on 12th October. A letter received from the Company Quartermaster-Sergeant states that all the officers of the company were casualties. The writer adds that Private McCulloch was most popular with everyone, being such a cheerful and willing soldier and was greatly esteemed by his comrades. It was in an advance towards the German trenches that he was killed by rifle fire, his death being instantaneous.”

The article puts him at 35, though he died three days before his 35th birthday. It also notes that prior to enlistment he worked for “Mr Barns-Graham, late of Craigallian”, adding “Our deepest sympathy goes out to his wife and children.” John and Emily’s descendants speak of the family being put out of the lodge at Craigallian after his death, though we know there was a period spent in London and this cutting suggests Emily and the three little ones were already living at Burnside. This was the terrace on Station Road that once housed Blanefield Printworks labourers and latterly was used to accommodate workers on the Edmonstone estate. That is certainly where Emily managed to find work as a maid. She was subsequently remarried, to Robert Melrose, and went on the have eight more children, making 11 in total, despite her diminutive stature. The family later moved to Ballewan Crescent.

Emily died on December 30 1971, aged 79, and is buried with her second husband in Strathblane Cemetery. Beside it is the gravestone of Emily’s daughter, Edith, the baby born in 1916 and who would never know her father. She would go on to wait at table during World War Two at Leddriegreen House, home of the Rowley Orrs, another name on Strathblane War Memorial (see 17). Allowed under wartime regulations to keep one member of staff, they chose Edith. She married road worker William Munden and died aged 71 in November 1987.  But the ties with the village remain, as Edith’s daughter, Emily Collie (named after her grandmother) and Emily’s own son Douglas and granddaughter Jessica still live in the village. Like his great grandfather, Douglas works as a domestic gardener.

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