STRATHBLANE FIRST WORLD WAR PROJECT: 18 WILLIAM PATERSON, PRIVATE ARGYLL & SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS, AGED 27.




This vivid depiction of the battle for Beaumont Hamel is typical of his work.
“The Battle of the Somme …was responsible for the deaths of two young men from Duntreath Estate: William Paterson, the gamekeeper’s son, and heir to the estate, William Edmonstone of the Coldstream Guards, who had been killed two months earlier. War is no respecter of class or rank.”
In 1896 there were celebrations at Duntreath Castle near Blanefield, following the birth of William, a son and heir for Sir Archibald Edmonstone. Eight years earlier just before Christmas and with considerably less of a fanfare, another William had come into the world in a remote three-roomed cottage on the Duntreath Estate. This William, the 18th name on Strathblane War Memorial, was the son of Alexander Paterson, one of the laird’s gamekeepers. He was named after his paternal grandfather, also a gamekeeper.
The thousands who tramp the West Highland Way each year pass the remains of this cottage at Arlehaven. Many walkers choose to pause there because it stands on a knoll at the head of a long valley at the point where the panorama of the Trossachs unfolds before them. It can be a bleak spot but on a good day it offers one of the finest views in Scotland. Occupied until recently, the cottage burned down and, fearing careless campers would destroy it a second time, the current Sir Archie Edmonstone has decided against rebuilding it.
As they came from opposite ends of Scotland, it would be interesting to know how William Paterson’s parents met. Alexander had been born in Coldstream in the Scottish Borders. At the time this 27-year old married in Glasgow in 1880, he was gamekeeping at Strathmiglo in Fife.
His bride, 23-year old Isabella, hailed from Dingwall in the far north of Scotland, where her father was a shepherd but by the time of her marriage, she was working as a dressmaker in the Polmadie area of Glasgow. This level of displacement is perhaps a reflection of the mobility offered to the working poor in Scotland by the coming of the railways.
Alexander and Isabella married in her home in Rutherglen Road, opposite Richmond Park. Their first son James was born soon afterwards. Then there is a gap. This may be explained by information gleaned from future census returns that several of the Patersons’ children died young. By the time Mary was born in 1886, the family had moved to Arlehaven but she was already dead two years later, when our subject, William, arrived. (She died of diphtheria, aged 16 months.)
Two more girls were to be born at Arlehaven: Bella (named after her mother) in 1891 and Maggie in 1894. (By a quirky coincidence, a boy called Alexander Lowe was born in another dwelling at Arlehaven in that year. His name would also feature on the war memorial (See Ch 9).)
By 1901 the Patersons’ home had sprouted two extra rooms to accommodate their growing brood and 12-year old William was still attending the local school. (The school leaving age was raised to 14 later that year.) Meanwhile, his elder brother James had left home.
By the time of the 1911 census the family was living in Bridge Cottage, which stands beside the bridge over the Endrick Water on the main Glasgow to Aberfoyle road (A81), near the turning to Gartness. William aged 22, still lived with his parents with sisters Bella, 20, and 15-year old Maggie. Three months afterwards, Bella was married to Thomas Kerr, a locomotive stoker. William Paterson was no doubt a well-known figure in the local community. By now he was employed as a “grocer’s van man” and would have been a regular visitor to many homes in the area as he made his routine deliveries.
William and his older brother James both joined the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. By this point the family had moved to Kilfasset Lodge, Balfron. Though he enlisted on November 22 1915 in the 3/4th Battalion A&SH, William became a Private in the 1st/7th Battalion, signing an agreement to serve abroad at a training camp near Ripon in Yorkshire on December 1. He embarked from Southampton on April 1 1916, an ominous date. A fortnight later, two days before joining his battalion “in the field”, he penned a simple one paragraph will, leaving “the whole of my property and affects to my mother, Mrs Bella Paterson”, by now seemingly back at Arlehaven on the Duntreath Estate.
Thousands of young men like William were now assembled in northern France along the banks of the River Somme, ready for the “big push” against the Germans.in the localityuld have been a regular visitor to many homes in the in action. William Paterson was reported The battle dragged on for four months from July to November 1916. The human cost reached unprecedented levels with British casualties totalling around 420,000. French losses were estimated at 200,000 and Germany lost some 500,000.
The Battle of Ancre, a tributary of the Somme, was the final phase of the 1916 Somme offensive, lasting from the November 13 to 18. It had been delayed for a month due to a period of bad weather with torrential rain turning the ground into a quagmire. South of the Ancre River was the British-held village of Thiepval, with German forces entrenched on the northern bank at the villages of Beaumont-Hamel and Beaucourt-sur-l’Ancre.
The battle was preceded in late October by a phase of wire cutting using artillery and two-inch mortars. A subsequent intense bombardment of the German positions was followed by the infantry attack. Thick fog shrouded the slow British advance over sodden terrain. A heavily fortified Y-shaped ravine blocked the approach to Beaumont Hamel adding to the difficulty of the military objective.
The soldiers of 51st Highland Division succeeded in capturing Beaumont-Hamel but were repulsed in their attempts to completely secure the extended targets of the locally named Munich and Frankfurt trenches. The AS&H official war diary recorded on November 15: “Attacking Munich and Frankfurt trenches…22 other ranks killed, 97 wounded, 19 missing.” These numbers probably include William Paterson, as he was reported dead the following day.
The climatic conditions finally brought the battle to a conclusion on November 18, with the onset of snow and sleet preventing the use of tanks and impairing adequate communication. By this stage British forces had been cut off in Frankfurt trench and taken prisoner by the enemy. Heavy German machine gun fire continued to pin down British forces preventing further progress.
Although the territorial gains were limited, the tactics employed by the Highland Division in particular were greatly admired, considering the difficulty of the terrain and the resistance encountered. The detailed account of the battle by Major Frederick Bewsher concludes: “The battle of Beaumont Hamel is the foundation stone on which the reputation of the Highland Division was built. General Harper’s leapfrog system of attack has been proved….and an experience had been gained from which the future training of the Division was evolved.”
Three of the five men named William on Strathblane War Memorial died at the Somme. While the 51st Division was taking Beaumont Hamel, Lieut William Ker with the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division was attacking between Beaumont Hamel and the Ancre, securing the village of Beaucourt on the second day of the offensive. But by then Ker too was dead (See Ch 8). The two men died within three days of one another in the same battle. And two months previously the same campaign had already claimed the life of William Edmonstone, heir to the Duntreath Estate (see Ch 7). So the son of the laird and the son of his gamekeeper had fought and died together in the Battle of the Somme. War is no respecter of class or rank.
William Paterson is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, a memorial to the missing of the Somme, designed by Sir Edward Lutyens and unveiled by the Prince of Wales and the President of France in 1932. Over 90% of the soldiers commemorated on the memorial died between July and November 1916. A kilted soldier features on the Beaumont Hamel Memorial to the 51st Highland Division. On the base is a Gaelic inscription that translates as “Friends are good on the day of battle”.
William’s name is also listed on the Killearn and Balfron War Memorials. A letter dated June 1 1917 to the officer in charge of Territorial Force Records in Perth from the War Office instructs him to forward William’s medals to his mother in Blanefield.
There are several sad postscripts to William Paterson’s life story. In 1920 his father succumbed to the Spanish flu epidemic that swept the world. William’s brother James survived the war and married in 1920 but his wife died in childbirth the following year. 1921 also saw the death of William’s youngest sister Maggie from tuberculosis. The records show that Isabella Paterson had borne seven children. Only two would outlive her. In 1922, aged 65, Isabella died at Arlehaven of “acute pulmonary congestion”. The layman might call it a broken heart.