STRATHBLANE WW1 PROJECT: 25 ERIC FERNANDEZ YARROW, LIEUTENANT ARGYLL & SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS, AGED 20.
“many of the working class who are sacrificing a great deal by enlisting”. He believed he would regret it later, if he was not allowed to volunteer.
This portrait hangs in Strathblane Village Club,
which he donated in 1911.
“I hope you will not worry about me as I am well and safe…No doubt this is or has been a most critical time of this war and I think, in the German great effort, the worst is over. I will write you fully when I return to billet.”
Eric Yarrow to his father May 7 1915. He was killed the next day in the Second Battle of Ypres.
The alphabetical list of names on Strathblane War Memorial finishes with 20-year old Eric Yarrow, Lieutenant in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. As that list begins with Yarrow’s great pal and fellow officer Jack Barr from Mugdock, killed just 13 days before, these two outstanding young men seem to buttress this project.
More than any other name on the memorial perhaps, Eric’s voice and image come down to us through the intervening century with great clarity. This is both because Eric was an excellent correspondent and diarist and because his father, the Clyde shipbuilder Sir Alfred Yarrow, meticulously collected Eric’s writings from the Western Front, as well as the numerous letters of condolence he received. There are also many photographs of Eric, both as a boy and a young man in uniform. In addition, Eric himself took a number of photographs. All are now preserved on a disc supplied by Oundle near Peterborough, Eric’s old boarding school, where a gallery was gifted in his name by his father in 1918.
Eric Fernandez Yarrow was born in Blackheath, London in January 1895, the youngest of the six children of Alfred (later Sir Alfred) Yarrow and Minnie Florence Yarrow. Sir Alfred’s mother had a Spanish Sephardi Jewish background. Hence the middle name Fernandez, though both father and son were raised as Christians. That lineage may account for the haunting eyes that stare from photographs of this young man.
There are childhood portraits in sailor suits and later an intelligent and serious-looking schoolboy, though contemporaries remember his infectiously cheerful high spirits. At Oundle he excelled both on the sports field, where he captained the football team and found success in athletics, and in the classroom, where he loved science.
Meanwhile around 1906 his father began moving his shipyard from the Thames to Scotstoun on the Clyde. Yarrow Shipbuilders by this time had become a lead contractor for the Royal Navy and was already known for its fast boats. The family purchased from shipowner George Douglas Wilson (see Ch 28) Campsie Dene House in Blanefield, designed by Alec Hislop, who had studied under Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The Yarrows seem not to have lived there all year round. In the 1911 Census, Eric was a 16-year old scholar at Oundle and the sole occupants of Campsie Dene were six servants, all English. Sir Alfred gifted both the Village Club and the ground for the tennis club to the community.
In 1913 Eric left Oundle and commenced studies in Mechanical Science at Trinity College, Cambridge, presumably with the idea of joining his father’s company but then seems to have had a change of heart. During the year he developed a keen interest in social reform and planned to switch his course to Political Economy in his second year. With the keen mind demonstrated in some of his correspondence, it is easy to imagine him becoming a member of parliament, even a political leader, had the war not intervened.
Eric could have avoided war service altogether, even after conscription, by joining the Yarrows payroll, as shipbuilding was a reserved occupation, but it wasn’t his style. In a powerful letter to his father in September 1914, Eric put his case for joining up.
He observed that “There are many of the working class who are sacrificing a great deal by enlisting.” Though his experience was limited to three years in the officer training corps at school, he believed it his duty to volunteer, adding “I believe I shall very much regret not having joined after the war is over”.
And he argued that although working at Yarrows may be an excuse for not enlisting, he felt “I run the risk of losing prestige at the factory both with the staff and the men”.
We do not have his father’s reply but Eric clearly won the argument, as he was commissioned into the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders shortly afterwards. In December a correspondent for his old school magazine observed: “The kilt suits Sec. Lieut. Yarrow very well; he has been over to ask our opinion on the hang of his sporran.” (As his rather stiff full length portrait in uniform shows, the dress version of this accessory features a badger’s head and six large white tassels. The handsome face, still chubby from childhood, has a full mouth under deep-set arresting eyes. )
It wasn’t long before this young man, barely a year out of school, started demonstrating both his leadership skills and his humanity. Before leaving for France he personally presented all his 50 men with the gift of a woollen shirt, vest, mits and gloves. Later one of them would report how his commander didn’t hesitate “to lift a spade and fill sandbags along with his men” during trench work or sub them a few francs for a night out in town.
He also soon developed a reputation for his derring-do on night time reconnaissance missions between the lines. On one occasion he returned triumphantly bearing a Bavarian helmet and on another is said to have planted a notice reading “To hell with the Kaiser” in no-man’s land. Such japes give the impression of a schoolboy having a lark.
There are photographs from this time of Yarrow’s life in the trenches, uncomfortable billets in abandoned farmhouses and rides out on horseback with Jack Barr and another A&SH Lieutenant, Gifford Moir from Alloa. The trio liked to style themselves as the Three Musketeers. (See Ch 1.)
In letters Eric thanked his father for sending out vital clothing and equipment, including new-fangled knee-high rubber boots for walking in flooded trenches and telescopic sights, which proved a great success in scaring off enemy snipers.
Typically, letters and diary entries accentuate the positive: “We were a very merry party”; “We have a great time on the whole”; “You will see from the above we do not lead a very strenuous existence”.
On April 21, his letter home concluded: “One hears about the war ending soon, so I will be back ere long.” Not so.
On April 25, the other two Musketeers, Jack Barr and Gifford Moir, both died in the assault on St Julien near Ypres. Eric personally both retrieved Barr’s body and dug his grave as well as writing long heartfelt letters of condolence to the families of both men.
In a subsequent reassuring letter to his own father, Eric merely says: “I much regret their loss as they were good friends.” By contrast, Sgt Alexander Hunter later wrote: “He told me he didn’t care whether he was killed or not as the devils had killed his two best friends.”
That may help explain the death-defying courage shown by Eric Yarrow on May 2 when, with hundreds of British soldiers choking to death around him after one of the first chlorine gas attacks by the Germans, he rallied his men, advanced, took over a machine gun in an abandoned trench and almost single-handedly held the line. (The Orr brothers from Leddriegreen (see Ch17) were both gassed in this attack.)This event later earned Eric a “mention in despatches” for “gallant and distinguished service in the field” but he did not live to read it.
On May 7, when his platoon was on the bank of the Yser canal, well behind the front line, he wrote a final letter to his father, assuring him that he was “well and safe” and suggesting that the worst of the German assault was over. The next day, unexpectedly, German shells began falling around him.
John Murdoch, the last man to speak to him, reported that “he was in his usual gay high spirits” and attempting to move his men to safer ground “when we heard the swish of heavy howitzers coming”. A piece of a shell broke off as it landed and struck Yarrow in the chest. Death was instantaneous.
Eric Yarrow was buried on the banks of the canal, near to where he fell, under a rough wooden cross bearing his name. His colonel, who had already recommended him for promotion to full lieutenant, reported to Eric’s father that the grave was soon covered in flowers left by his men.
In a letter of condolence, John Murdoch wrote: “His loss was a more staggering blow to the men than any other.” Private Alexander Morrison reported: “He was well liked by all and the men used to say that he was too brave to live.” Another witness reported that the event “has cast a gloom over the whole battalion”.
There were similar outpourings of grief from those who had known him earlier in life. His former headmaster, Frederick Sanderson, described his death as “calamitous news”. A former teacher spoke of his “beautiful altruism and optimism”. An old classmate remembered his “contagious happiness”.
Eric Yarrow was awarded the 1914/1915 Star in addition to the Victory Medal and the British War Medal. He was mentioned in Field Marshall Sir John French’s despatch of May 31 1915. His grave is in the Essex Farm Cemetery in Belgium. As well as Strathblane War Memorial, his name appears on the Yoker War memorial, near his father’s shipyard and the memorial in All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Bearsden.
Another former teacher, a Mr Hopkinson, perhaps summed up the views of many others when he wrote: “The terrible waste of young life in this war comes home to me, because so many of my pupils have fallen and I fear that many more will go.”
(In 1920 Eric’s eldest brother, Sir Harold Yarrow, named his son after his dead brother. This Eric (later Sir Eric) Yarrow went on to become managing director and then chairman of the Clyde shipyard founded by his grandfather. He celebrated his 94th birthday in April 2014.)