STRATHBLANE WW1 PROJECT: 27 JOHN DILLON, PRIVATE ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS, AGED 24.
“The bearers are in good spirits despite the casualties and working well but had a rough time in Bernafay Wood which was being thoroughly and systematically shelled as are all the positions round about.”
War Diary of Colonel Otto Elsner of the Royal Army Medical Corps, July 5, 1916.
The final name on Strathblane War Memorial belongs to 24-year-old John Dillon, a stretcher bearer, who died in the Somme Offensive of 1916. His is one of two names to have been appended to the 25 others, which are arranged alphabetically. It is unclear why he seems to have been an afterthought because although he may never have fired a shot, nevertheless he died for his country. And he clearly qualified as a native of the parish, having been born in the Dumbrock area of Strathblane in 1891. Could it have been because, unlike the other men on the “parish” memorial, he was a Roman Catholic?
Thanks to a contact in 2025 from one of John’s great nieces, Strathblane Heritage has been able to fill out his life story considerably. She has also been able to supply us with several photographs of the family and, most precious of all, a portrait of John in uniform.
As his surname suggests, John Dillon’s family had Irish origins. In fact, all eight of his great grandparents were Irish. His paternal grandparents, Patrick Dillon and Ann McGill came from Layd in County Antrim and had arrived in Campbeltown, Argyll around 1850, probably to escape the consequences of the Irish Potato Famine. Patrick found work as a labourer and there were seven children, including John’s father, also John, born in Campbeltown in 1861.
About 1871 the family moved to the East End of Glasgow, where Patrick worked as a “road metal breaker”, but died of TB five years later, aged 47. His widow Ann found work as a housekeeper in Milngavie at a place called Summervill’s Land (near the modern-day Summerston estate). She is there with four of her children in the 1881 Census but died of cancer the following year.
By 1885 her second surviving son, John, now 23 and working as a gardener’s labourer, married Maggie O’Donnell, a bleachfield worker from Milngavie in a Roman Catholic ceremony. (Maggie’s parents and grandparents were all Irish-born.) John and Maggie’s first child, Patrick, was born in Milngavie in 1888. However, within two years the Dillons had moved to Dumbrock House in Strathblane.
This white two-storey building in what is now known as the “horses’ field” is long gone. Despite its rather grand name, it had no electricity, running water or sanitation. Owned by Sir James Buchanan of Craigend Castle, it was let out as one or two-roomed apartments to hard-up families. Mr Dillon worked for Sir James as a forester. (In 1901 he and three other foresters would carry Sir James’s coffin into Strathblane Church.)
The Dillons’ second son, named John after his father, was born on 15 September 1891. It was a home birth, as was usual in those days. It is unlikely that his mother would have had medical assistance in childbirth. That would have been too expensive. At the time there was usually a woman in each area who delivered amateur help in those circumstances. In this case, she would have needed to fetch water from a local spring to wash the newborn! By coincidence, Daniel Morrison, one of the other men on Strathblane War Memorial, also lived in Dumbrock House and the two must have known one another well, though Daniel was 12 years older.
By the 1901 census, when John was nine, the family had increased to five with the arrival of two more boys and a baby sister. In addition to his immediate family, it is recorded that a niece, 15-year-old Agnes O’Donnell, lived with them. She was the illegitimate daughter of Mrs Dillon’s sister and worked as a domestic servant. It must have been rather crowded as eight of them lived in two rooms.
It must have been around 1906 that the family donned their Sunday best (or possibly outfits borrowed from the photographer) and posed for a charming family portrait.
In the 1911 Census John continues to elude our searches but Patrick, his elder brother, is recorded as being in Paisley, working as a “nurse attendant” for the Renfrew Lunacy Board. The following year The Milngavie & Bearsden Herald reports that a John Dillon has received his “FiveYears’ Badge” for abstaining from alcohol from the Roman Catholic St Joseph’s League of the Cross (a temperance organisation), though it is not clear whether this is the father or the son. Around this time the Dillon family apparently moved into one of the gardeners’ cottages at Craigend, in what is now Mugdock Park. In fact, this terrace of cottages, which backs on to the walled garden, has now been turned into Caulders Garden Centre. Maggie Dillon, along with daughter Margaret and a toddler called May (probably a niece), are pictured there around 1913.
By the outbreak of the First World War John, now aged 22, seems to have been living in Tarbert, Argyll. Given his family’s strong association with gardening and forestry (all three of John’s surviving brother would go into this work), one possibility is that he was working as a gardener at Stonefield Castle, a mansion on the banks of Loch Fyne, owned by the Campbell family and famed for its collection of rhododendrons, camellias and other rare plants. (It is now a hotel.)
Shortly after war was declared, John enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps. It is not known why he made this rather unusual choice, though some RAMC recruits were conscientious objectors who did not want to fight but were keen to “do their bit”.
He joined the 27th Field Ambulance which was part of Kitchener’s 1st New Army (as opposed to the regular army) and which was composed entirely of volunteers. They were attached to the 9th (Scottish) Division. The unit initially trained in Scotland then moved to Aldershot and from there to Bordon, Hampshire, in September 1914. It must have been very exciting for a young country boy. On May 7, 1915, 27th Field Ambulance was transported to Southampton and shipped to Le Havre, some on the Mount Temple and others on SS Queen Alexandria. Surely even more exciting! If only he had known what lay ahead.
His job was as a stretcher bearer. Their duty was to get the wounded off the battlefield and to the regimental aid post just behind the front lines. Here one or two medical officers would administer what aid they could before the wounded were transported further back to comparative safety and definitive treatment. It was a very hazardous occupation as bearers were constantly exposed to enemy fire in the course of their duties and this was reflected in their casualty rates. How well they performed is also reflected in the number of decorations they received.
John’s commanding officer was Colonel Otto Elsner who must have been quite a man as he was mentioned in dispatches on five occasions and awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). In spite of his rather German-sounding name, he was an Irishman from Galway, who had trained at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. Fortunately for us, he kept a war diary. In July 1916 the unit was engaged in the Battle of the Somme as part of the 9th Division on the very southern section of the Allied line. The battle started on July 1 but the Division was not fully engaged until two days later. On July 4 Col Elsner starts recording the casualties amongst his men: two stretcher bearers killed that day and four others wounded, two in addition having what he calls ‘shock shell’.
On July 5 he describes the conditions that John must have been enduring: “Bearer division now established on German 1st line valley trench (A.3.C.8.0) in some German dugouts very deep and safe. Evacuation is easy along the railway line in Train Alley on trolleys. The bearers are in good spirits despite the casualties and working well but had a rough time in Bernafay Wood which was being thoroughly and systematically shelled as are all the positions round about.”
It should be remembered that they were in German trenches which, for them, faced the wrong way. In other words, the entrances to the dugouts now faced the direction from which fire was coming.
Further casualties are reported in his diary each day. They almost invariably involve gunshot wounds, suggesting that the bearers were very exposed on the battlefield in the course of their duties and often became casualties themselves.
Here we come back to John. Col Elsner’s entry for July 12, 1916 reads: “Visited bearers at rest in Maricourt Dugouts, but shelling daily and after visit.”
Then follows his daily list of casualties amongst his men. Inter alia it states: “Pte J. Dillon- GSW [gunshot wounds] Head, Arm, Chest- Killed.”
That was the end of John’s journey from Strathblane. By July 13 Elsner had lost one third of his men, killed or wounded. The postie must have been a dreadful sight when he arrived at the door of John’s family home, bearing the blunt letter informing them of where and when their son had been killed.
An army record card, issued in 1918, states that John’s mother would receive a modest pension. Though her address is given as “Mugdock Castle”, we can probably assume that this refers to Craigend Castle, which is also in what is now Mugdock Park. The 1920 valuation roll and 1921 Census both give the family’s address as the Craigend gardeners’ cottages. The counter for the Caulders gift shop probably marks the spot where John must have made his last visit to his parents and where they heard of his death.
John’s parents lived on into the 1940s and both died in Milngavie. All three of John’s brothers followed their father’s profession and became gardeners. The eldest, Patrick, became the college gardener at St Peter’s training college for Roman Catholic priests at Kilmahew near Cardross and died aged 74 in 1963.
John Dillon is buried in Peronne Road Cemetery, in Maricourt, Northern France. His headstone bears a quotation from an Irish air by Thomas Moore: “ Tis the sad remembrance, fondly kept, when all other griefs have faded”. We can assume this was his mother’s choice. John qualified for the 1914/15 Star in addition to the Victory Medal and the European War Medal. As well as in Strathblane, John is remembered on the striking grey granite obelisk that overlooks the pretty harbour of Tarbert Loch Fyne and provides a bearing for yachtsmen and fishermen trying to get home. Something John Dillon never managed to do.
Note: A big thank you to Marie Beer, John’s great niece, who supplied photographs and information about her relative Also to Aggie Dennis, who is researching the men on the war memorial in Tarbert Argyll as well as Dr George Bennet, who wrote the original story. Anne Balfour, June 2026