STRATHBLANE FIRST WORLD WAR PROJECT: 19 COLIN OGILVIE RANKIN, LANCE CORPORAL HIGHLAND LIGHT INFANTRY, AGED 27.




“One of the battalions opposing us was similar to our own, a students’ battalion from Bavaria. The enemy used explosive and dum-dum bullets, and sniped off any of our wounded lying exposed in the open. … Men coolly fired at each other at point blank range, and sniping became the chief cause of casualties. It resembled a duel between two men who had had a deadly quarrel—so intensely deliberate.”
Lieutenant Bentley Meadows 17th HLI
Colin Ogilvie Rankin was the youngest son of Walter Lorrain Rankin, who was the village doctor in Strathblane for some 30 years. Colin must have grown up in a busy home. He was born and raised in Old Edenkiln in Dumbrock Road (the large Victorian house two doors from the modern health centre). It was not only the family home: the doctor had it extended to accommodate his surgery too. (Some locals still refer to this part of the village as “Doctor’s Brae”.)
By the time Colin was born on December 15 1889, there were four older brothers: William Munro aged 11, Peter nine, six-year old Harry and three-year old Clement Balfour. Another boy, James, was born in 1885 but at aged four months succumbed to whooping cough. In 1895 a girl named Janet Adam (known as Jenny) completed the family. The ten-roomed house also had a live-in maid, Kate Darroch.
Colin’s father qualified as a doctor in 1878 and his appointment as the village doctor was his first medical job. Two years earlier, he had married his cousin Clementina and the couple had initially lodged in the High St in Glasgow, next door to her parents’ butchers shop. The young family probably lived elsewhere in Dumbrock Road for a time before leasing Old Edenkiln from the Leddriegreen Estate. The demands on the doctor must have been heavy. He was surgeon to the printworks, which was still near its peak production, and the population was at record levels at a time when sanitation and housing were poor and disease common. Colin would have been accustomed to the sound of a frantic villager at the door, summoning urgent help for a sick child or injured worker; and the clatter as the doctor set off in the horse and trap he used from the stables across the road. Things probably became a little quieter at the turn of the century, as hygiene started to improve, the printworks closed and the population halved, though there were still regular medical emergencies. For instance, we find him attending when the 37-year old mother of James Robb (see 21) suddenly collapsed and died in 1906.
The doctor was a large, genial man, comfortable with people from all walks of life, and much loved and respected by the community. Outside his medical practice, he managed to find time to help in many ways, including serving on the school board for a time, and he was a keen member of the newly formed bowling club.
The first decade of the new century saw many changes in young Colin’s life, starting with his brothers leaving home. Peter emigrated to South Africa, probably in 1904. In 1907, Clement emigrated to the USA and his oldest brother, William, seems to have left for Canada around the same time. Then in August 1909, at the age of 54, the Dr Rankin died suddenly. He is commemorated on a plaque in Strathblane Parish Church, which was funded by public subscription: further evidence of the respect he enjoyed in the village.
Soon afterwards his remaining family decamped to a flat at 90 Barrington Drive in Glasgow.
By the time of his father’s death and the move to Glasgow, Colin had completed his education at the High School in Glasgow and by 1911 he was a shipping clerk with the Allan Line Steamship Company, still living with his mother and sister. When he joined up in 1914, barely a month after war was declared, Clementina must have felt bereft, waving the fourth of her five surviving sons.
On September 13 1914 Colin enlisted as a private with the 17th Battalion Highland Light Infantry (he was later promoted to lance-corporal). This was known as the Chamber of Commerce Battalion 3rd Glasgow, and comprised mainly students of the Royal Technical College, former pupils of city schools such as Glasgow Academy and the High School of Glasgow, and men from business and trades. It typified the “pals battalions”, in which young men who worked and, in this case studied together, were encouraged to join up together. The battalion was proud of its intellectual and sporting prowess. From early 1915, it even managed to produce a magazine, called The Outpost. As one high-ranking English officer observed in an article in The Glasgow News: “It is only your dour, determined Scotsmen who could manage to carry on such a paper under the tremendous handicaps of active service, and the result has been unquestionably the finest literary and artistic venture in battalion magazines that the war has produced.”
Ten days after Colin enlisted, the battalion crammed into the Examination Hall of the Royal Technical College where the men were given a send-off by Chamber of Commerce officials. They went first to Gailes Camp in Ayrshire, then Troon and various training camps in England, and eventually embarked for France on November 22 1915.
On December 1 they travelled to Bouzincourt, into front line trenches that were in a very bad condition after hard frost and heavy rain. Trenches were collapsing and there were reports of men drowning in mud and water. By December 6 the battalion was north of La Boiselle, in trenches knee deep in water and overrun by rats. (Colin and his battalion later met the men of the 15th HLI en route to their first spell in the trenches and who regarded the mud-plastered men of the 17th with utter astonishment.)
In contrast with the previous year, when British and German troops fraternised during a Christmas truce, this time the men were under strict instructions to reject any friendly overtures from the enemy.
A Battery Commander of some gunners from Yorkshire fought alongside the 17th HLI at one point. We can detect the respect and rough affection with which he regarded the Scots in this recollection: “We first met the famous 17th HLI about New Year 1916, in the La Boiselle Sector and much concern as to the pronunciation of the Scottish names given to the trenches was felt by my Yorkshire gunners – Sauchiehall Street in particular defeated them. They wished the Jocks would use Christian Huddersfield names!”
On July 1 1916, Colin was wounded in the Battle of the Somme. In the run up to “Day Zero”, a Lieutenant Bentley Meadows recorded in his diary that the men made a bonfire on which “we burned all our letters, and had the last sing-song the old 17th ever had.” The battle started at 7.30am on a hot clear day. The battalion was not relieved until sunset the following day. Meadows later recorded in his detailed account of the battle: “The whole fighting was of a cold, deliberate, merciless nature. No quarter was given or taken. One of the battalions opposing us was similar to our own, a students’ battalion from Bavaria. The enemy used explosive and dum-dum bullets, and sniped off any of our wounded lying exposed in the open. … Men coolly fired at each other at point blank range, and sniping became the chief cause of casualties. It resembled a duel between two men who had had a deadly quarrel—so intensely deliberate.”
The battalion roll call on July 4 revealed that the casualties of the battle totalled 22 officers and 447 other ranks. (This was the downside of pals battalions. Men who had joined together, died together with the result that individual communities suffered disproportionate losses. The creation of these battalions came to an end with the introduction of conscription in early 1916.)
Colin survived his wounds and on his return to active duty he must have been transferred to the 12th Battalion HLI because it is with them that he was killed in action on the Arras-Cambrai Road on April 25 1917. (Latterly the remnants of pals battalions were split up and parcelled out to reinforce other battalions. The official war diaries record extra troops arriving at the 12th Battalion over the preceding year.)
The operation in which Colin was killed took place over four days from April 22 to 27. It claimed 33 lives, left 102 wounded or shell shocked, and 13 missing in action – a total of 147 out of the 643 officers and men who fought in it. Many were the victims of snipers or machine gun fire.
The Official War Diary for the 12th HLI for this operation records: “The Battn went into action short of officers and after casualties, the work devolving upon those remaining was heavy. The NCOs and men fought and worked without cessation from the time of going into action on the 23rd until relieved and praise bestowed upon them by their officers is well merited.” Another Strathblane man, Alex Mitchell (see Ch 10) died in the same battle.
Colin was buried in an unmarked grave, but his name is on the Arras Memorial in Faubourg-D’Amiens Cemetery, France, which commemorates those who died with no known grave. He appears too on the war memorial of the Park Church, Giffnock, Glasgow. Originally this memorial was in Park Circus, but was moved to Giffnock when the church in Park Circus closed. He is also on the Roll of Honour at the High School of Glasgow, as well as the City of Glasgow Roll of Honour. He was awarded the 1914/15 Star as well as the British War Medal and Victory Medal awarded to most combatants..
Colin’s mother Clementina lived on at Barrington Drive for the rest of her life, receiving occasional summer visits from son Clement, latterly accompanied by his wife Elizabeth. Both are buried in California.
Clementina would not join her husband in Strathblane Churchyard until 1939, three decades after the doctor’s death. Colin’s sister Jenny married a Glasgow solicitor, Harry Reed, at the age of 36 and lived to 75. Brother Harry, who became a cloth merchant and travelled abroad, remained unmarried and was living in the Barrington Drive flat at the time of his death in 1948.