STRATHBLANE WW1 PROJECT: 15 JAMES MACINTYRE, PRIVATE SEAFORTH HIGHLANDERS, AGED 19.
“My Dearest James, You are splendid to be off already and I do wish you luck. Hope this parcel may be good. Your loving Auntie R.”
Card inside the pocket war atlas carried by James on the Somme.
Small objects can tell big stories. Take the battered pocket atlas belonging to Private James Macintyre, the youngest man on Strathblane War Memorial. Open it and stitched into the back cover is an ordinary calendar tab for the year 1916. Each day is meticulously scored out in pencil…until September 5. A few weeks later this little book – about the size of a passport – found its way back to the village and his grieving family.
James is not only the youngest man on the memorial but is one of only two 19-year olds. The other is Lt Willie Edmonstone, son of the local laird. Though these two young men probably never met, a web of coincidence links their very different families and the memory of a fateful meeting between their fathers remains as fresh and poignant today as when it happened 98 years ago.
James was the eldest son of a successful tartan manufacturer. The family company of John Macintyre & Sons would turn to making khaki during World War II and may well have kitted out some of the kilted regiments of World War I. In 1894 his father, John Macintyre, had married Margaret Webster Davidson, who came from a family of Kirkcaldy solicitors, and James was born in January 1897 at Southfield Villa in Bellshill.
Soon afterwards the family moved to Blanefield, where they rented Kessogbank (beside St Kessog’s RC Church), a comfortable villa built in the late 1880s for Robert McLintock, then manager of Blanefield Printworks. (Kessogbank stands beside the little triangle of land that now accommodates the war memorial). A second son, Alistair, arrived in 1900, soon followed by daughter Agnes and finally Donald in 1905. Local school records show the children winning various prizes and suggest the children may have survived scarlet fever in 1907. Each Sunday the family walked up to the Gowkstane, the boulder which overlooks the village and is the subject of some controversial local folklore (see below). A snapshot shows the family at this landmark, squinting into the sun as they enjoy their Sunday constitutional.
By 1911 they had moved to another rented home, eight-roomed Milndavie House, an elegant Georgian villa, next door to what is now the riding stables. Mary Renfrew, a locally-born cook and housekeeper, was a much-loved fixture in the family. The children spent holidays with their grandfather (another James), owner of a large house in Callander, which was at one time accessible from the village by steam train. It was a comfortable childhood and a happy one, at least until the death of Margaret Macintyre from lung cancer in 1912, aged only 39.
Nevertheless, the company was thriving and James was being groomed to succeed his father when war intervened. Though only 17 and against the wishes of his family, James was determined to volunteer. He enlisted in Stirling and joined the 3rd Battalion Seaforth Highlanders. One family member who supported his decision was his father’s sister Rhoda. It was she who gave her nephew a miniature atlas along with a card that read: “My Dearest James, You are splendid to be off already and I do wish you luck. Hope this parcel may be good. Your loving Auntie R.” He kept it with him until the end.
The only surviving portrait of James in uniform was found in the wallet of his only sister, Agnes, after her death, decades later. It shows a slim and strikingly handsome young man wearing a pensive expression.
The 3rd Seaforths was a reserve battalion based in Cromarty and which never left Scotland. However, it provided drafts for other battalions serving overseas. This is how James ended up in the 8th Battalion, which landed at Boulogne in July 1915. (It meant James would qualify for the 1914/15 Star as well as the Victory Medal and British War Medal.)
Even after that he seems to have enjoyed some home leave. A pressed wild rose bud fixed in his pocket atlas with stamp paper is labelled “Ardlui June 1916”. And his nephew Donald Macintyre recalls being told that James brought a Canadian comrade called William Nicholson home with him. There was a visit to the Gowkstane, where James persuaded his pal that to be counted “a true native of Strathblane”, he should slide down the celebrated rock on his bare bottom. (Nicholson was neither the first nor the last to fall for this jape and he enjoyed recounting the story on future visits.)
A few weeks later the pair were back on the Somme, where the fighting was hotting up as the Allies tried to make a decisive push against the Central Powers. By November the Germans would be pushed back about six miles and the combined casualties were more than a million, dead and wounded. No wonder the Somme has become a byword for indiscriminate slaughter and blackened the reputation of British commander General Sir Douglas Haig.
The official War Diary of the 8th Bn Seaforth Highlanders for this period offers vivid insight into the cycle of tedium and terror that made up the day to day lives of James and his comrades. Throughout August the battalion was involved in a constant round of training, parades and working parties in the trenches, where they were vulnerable to heavy enemy bombardment. There are several references to men being treated for shell shock, though it is clear that many were simply sent back to the front line after a few days.
Every day or two the battalion either relieves or is relieved by battalions from another regiment in the 44th Brigade. Each of these moves is the subject of detailed choreography, including lists of what each man is to carry. On one occasion this includes a loaded haversack, 220 rounds of ammunition, two bombs (wrapped in sandbags), a pick or shovel, gas mask, gas goggles, helmet and a spare satchel. The closest thing to a treat is a very occasional shower.
There are minutely detailed battle plans, followed by shocking casualty figures and diary entries revealing various reasons why the plans fell apart almost instantly. The fog of war makes it unclear exactly where and when James was fatally wounded. The last day crossed off on his calendar is September 5. His death date is given as September 8 in army records but September 12 in a subsequent letter to his father from the Infantry Record Office.
The most likely scenario is that he was badly injured on September 8 when his battalion was held in reserve in the vicinity of Bethell Sap during the attack on High Wood, east of Albert. There is a warning order that day that the Germans may be preparing a counter-attack. And on the following day there is a report that trenches around Bethell Sap had “been seriously damaged by shell fire”. Lists show that 29 of the battalion’s 85 casualties that month occurred on September 8.
James was taken to the 38th Clearing Station at Mericourt-L’Abbe, where he died. Burials at the nearby Heilly Station Cemetery were carried out under enormous pressure and many are not marked individually but at least James’s family have the comfort of a gravestone bearing his name in the immaculate Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery there today.
When the news of James Macintyre’s death reached Strathblane, Sir Archibald Edmonstone of Duntreath, whose own son Willie was fighting on the Somme, requested his coachman to drive him to Milndavie House so that he could offer condolences to the lad’s father. This story comes from Donald Macintyre, whose father, also Donald, was James’s youngest brother: “Dad remembered the coach sitting outside the front door and being allowed to go out and see it. After speaking with my grandfather, Sir Archie got back in his coach and returned to Duntreath, only to discover soon afterwards that his own son had died.” The exact chronology of this story is unclear but it has the ring of truth. Willie Edmonstone died on September 15, a few days after James Macintyre. As an officer, his death would have been notified by telegram, while the family of James, a humble private, had to make do with a pro forma letter in the ordinary mail. (Modern readers are rightly shocked by such discrimination.)
So two boys from one community, born a few weeks apart, died a few days apart and, as it happens, only a few miles apart. And two families, once divided by class, were brought together by unimaginable grief. Both qualified for the 1914/15 Star.
John Macintyre died in 1937. His two surviving sons, Alistair and Donald, took over the family business as joint managing directors. The business was moved from Bell St in Glasgow to Milton of Campsie and continued in production until the mid-1960s. Donald and is wife eventually retrained as chiropodists and the Dowager Lady Edmonstone was one of their patients. Their son, another Donald, went into the garage business in 1969, operating from Yarrow House near the Edmonstone Hall in Blanefield and doing the occasional chauffeuring job for the Edmonstone family. Now semi-retired, he and his wife live in Brechin.
The other Willie in this story, the Canadian Willie Nicholson, survived the war and became an insurance agent, often returning on holiday to Strathblane. Let us imagine him pausing at the war memorial to remember with a smile his friend James and a bit of bare-faced cheek.