|
In
common with scores of small rural communities throughout Britain, the
people of Stewarton received the news of war, in 1914, first with
surprised disbelief and then with enthusiasm for the cause. By the end
of the war, which spanned not only the bloody battlegrounds of France, the
Low Countries and Southern Europe but also Asia Minor, and even Africa, Stewartonians had served
in every major theatre; In the army, navy, merchant marine and air force*
The causes of the 1914-18 war were extremely complex, with little of the obvious
moral dimension which inspired the will to win in the Second World War, when the
defeat of Fascism of itself seemed Justification enough,
Stewartonians, through the
"Kilmarnock Standard", were told that their homes
and loved ones were in peril, and were swept up in
the war-fever which engulfed Britain. The fact of war, however, was something,
which at first dawned only slowly, in the common imagination. It was tragically
believed that modern wars would be of short duration (the term "Home
by Christmas" gained added irony with the passing of every
disastrous year on the Western Front), and at first the war was viewed
more as a disruption of normal business than anything else.
The Stewarton
entry in the Kilmarnock Standard for August 8, 1914, comments,
“A serious feature in connection with the re-opening of the factories
next week is the wholesale cancellation of both home and foreign
orders on account of the war. The knitting trade has been anything but
bright for nearly a year, and this further blocking of trade is
most unfortunate. The members of our local Territorial Company duly reported
themselves for duty on Wednesday morning. They again assembled at the
Drill hall on Thursday morning, when they marched off to their Headquarters
at Kilmarnock. They got a hearty send-off from a large crowd.
Many of the lads had their holiday cut short, but
we earnestly hope that their services will not be required for
more than precautionary measures."
The same issue carried an appeal; "The Territorial Force
County Association makes an urgent appeal to ex-soldiers (regulars, Yeomanry,
Volunteers, or Territorials) to enrol themselves in the
National Reserve. Close up the ranks, men!"
This theme was repeated later in the
month when, in the Institute hall: "Captain Northcote, recruiting officer, Kilmarnock,
delivered an earnest appeal for recruits, and gave particulars of the terms
of service. At the close of the meeting several recruits came forward
and arrangements were made for further enrolment."
Ominously, the same issue reported renewed efforts to
collect funds for the “Local Distress Fund begun for the
unemployed".
The sudden onslaught of war had taken Stewarton by surprise. In
July the Standard had still been able to find room for guarded
optimisms "There is reason to hope that the forecasted trouble, let
alone the foreshadowed disruption, will never be realised, and that
Europe will be spared the recrudescence of the Eastern Question, at
what is now, to all appearance, its most dangerous point".
The
mobilisation for war was founded locally on the need to
defend the homeland (albeit by sending an expeditionary force to foreign
soil) against the German aggressor - who was identified plainly with
Prussian militarism, personified by the Kaiser. The ordinary
Kilmarnock man or Stewartonian was left in no doubt that Germany was
out to conquer and enslave Europe, impetus being given to the
propaganda drive by the fate of "brave little Belgium",
through which Germany was invading France in accordance with their long
rehearsed strategic plan, devised by Graf
von Schlieffen. This breach of neutrality was enough to
convince the average Briton that the homeland was indeed in
danger. If the Low Countries fell, the river Scheldt was aimed
"like a gun, pointing at the heart of Britain". However, to
add fuel to the flames, the myth was put
about, here as elsewhere, that the Germans were committing
unspeakable atrocities upon Belgian women and children in their march toward
France, and local newspaper correspondence, from ministers and
laity, dwelt at length on the ungodly nature of the "Teuton", Fund-raising
events such as flag days, for the Belgian Relief Fund, became regular
events in Stewarton's weekly life
Enlistment
progressed steadily throughout 1914; men who were too small or who had some
minor physical disability often going to enormous lengths -to secure themselves
a place in the ranks. One Kilmarnock volunteer who was missing an index finger
was nearly prevented from enlisting, but managed to convince the examining
medical officer that he could still efficiently pull the trigger of a rifle.
Although the news from the front was frequently grim, the real impact of the war
was not to strike home locally until 1915 * although the hardship suffered by
those affected by the trade recession was real enough. The first year of the war
saw Britain's professional army, the B.E.F,, helping to stall the German
advance. Thereafter, the war of movement was over, and the Western Front settled
down to trench warfare, which was to prove an insatiable devourer of young
lives.
Stewarton has a long association with the Royal Scots Fusiliers (now the Royal
Highland Regiment, since amalgamation with the famous 7Ist, the H.L.I.) and the
Fusiliers were Stewarton's local Territorial affiliation. It followed that many
Stewartonians were aboard the Mauritania, in May 1915, when the regiment left
Britain for active service - not in Flanders, as it turned out, but to the
Dardanelle’s, and the hideously costly defeat on the beaches of Gallipolis.
They were followed by the Ayrshire Yeomanry in September. They had last seen
active service 'the Boer War, 1899-1902, when despite their
"cavalry" designation they had been employed as mounted infantry. Now,
despite cavalry formations, they were to be used as infantry, and were attached
to the 52nd Lowland Division. Cavalry no longer had any place in modern warfare.
Not all Stewartonians were with the Fusiliers. Private Stephen Kerr, a regular in
the ranks of Kitcheners Army, was the first of seven young men known later as
the "Daurlinton Squad". Trained at Invergordon, he went overseas with
Lochiel’s Carter on Highlanders in April I925. He was killed at Hill 60
by shrapnel on the 1st of May. Fellow Stewartonian Private John Getnmell, a
regular with the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, died at Hill 60 a few days
earlier on April 23d -the first day that the Germans used poison gas.
The Gallipoli campaign has gone down as one of the more spectacular fiascos of
British military history, although at the time much was done to try and minimise
the magnitude of the disaster, for the sake of morale. At least six
Stewartonians are known to have died in the campaign. John Nairn, a gardener at
Lainshaw; James King of Dunlop Street; John Smith of Avenue Street; David
Browning of Deans Street; Daniel Stewart, a hammerman with Messrs. Loudon Bros.,
High Street; Quatermaster-sgt. David Stirrat, another Fusilier, the eldest son
of Stirrat the baker of Lainshaw Street.
On
the Western Front, the casualties mounted, horrifyingly, through 1915 and 1916.
Large spaces in the "Kilmarnock Standard" were filled every week with
long lists of local casualties. Editorials, compiled from foreign
correspondents, discussed advances and retreats, but the reality was stalemate.
The massacre of the Somme began to shake the confidence of even the most ardent
admirers of Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander. The talk was no longer of
victory but of somehow holding on. The tide was finally to change with the
arrival of the Americans in 1917, but many more ordinary servicemen were to die
before the final cessation of hostilities on November 11th, 1918.
Stewarton's most notable war casualty was undoubtedly the MP for North Ayrshire,
Lieutenant-Colonel Duncan F Campbell, DSO, a veteran of the Boer War who had
been several times mentioned in despatches by Sir Redvers Bullers, and his
replacement Lord Roberts. Serving initially with the 42nd, the Black Watch, he
was transferred to the Gordon Highlanders with the rank of Captain. One of
Stewarton's early war casualties, he was wounded by shrapnel at Ypres in 1914,
but continued fighting until hit again by another shell. After a convalescence
which lasted until spring 1916 he declared himself fit to resume active service,
and, promoted Lieutenant-Colonel, was placed in command of the 2/7 Duke of
Wellington's Regiment.
He was on the point of taking up his command when he suffered an internal
haemorrhage, dying shortly after on September an inevitably, in the course of
hostilities, some Stewartonians became Prisoners of War. As in the Second
World War, local families often had to wait for anxious weeks or months until
news of their sons or husbands percolated back from the Front. On more
than one occasion, a soldier listed simply as "missing" would crop up
in some camp in the heart of Germany, alive and well,- often announcing his
presence with a simple postcard declaring himself to be alive and well,
and reasonably looked after. The eventual homecoming of the soldier
concerned would of course be the cue for tremendous local celebration. One
consistent feature of the Germans' treatment of British (and presumably other)
prisoners of war was that in areas near the front they were extremely well
looked after. There was seldom much rancour off the battlefield between British
and German soldiers, both of whom were living in the same appalling conditions,
and both of whom were growingly aware of the futility of the "tactics"
employed by their respective General Staffs. Further from the front it was
a different story, reservist military and civilian Germans treating the captured
soldier as the most despicable type of criminal, and providing only the very
minimum in bad food and insanitary accommodation. Civilians on both sides
were more susceptible to their Governments1 xenophobic propaganda than the
soldiers who had been in daily contact with the enemy.
Although mounted cavalry were an anachronism in the trenched wastelands of the
Western Front, in Mesopotamia there was still room for the war of movement,
which meant that large forces of mounted troops could still be used by
intelligent commanders such as General Allenby to cover vast and arid deserts.
The fighting, as elsewhere, was conducted on foot. A Stewarton schoolteacher
found himself serving in the ranks of the Imperial Camel Corps, having
originally joined the Scottish Horse in September 1914, serving in Egypt and
ultimately at Gaza - where the tank had made an early appearance.
Transferred to the King's Own Scottish Borderers he was first lightly injured
while leading a platoon in the second attack on Gaza, and was then mortally
injured on April 19, 1917. Another teacher, Private Andrew Bower of the 11th
Scottish Rifles (whose father, a J.P., lived in Dunlop Street) had offered to
join the army at Christmas, 1914, and again in 1915. Only in 1917 was he
finally accepted for service, with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was
posted to Salonika, one of the oddest of Britain's far-flung military
involvements, in which campaign the enemy was Germany's Balkan ally Bulgaria.
His eventual fate was possibly more tragic than that of the battlefield
casualty, given his determination to join the army. Once a teacher at
Broomloan School in Govan, he found himself taking part in a nightmarish trek
across Bulgaria, after the Bulgarian surrender in the winter of 1918, suffering
all the worst effects of the severe climate - and died of pneumonia at Rustchuk
on the Danube on December 9, 1918.
Another
tragic Stewarton casualty was Corporal John Wardrobe, who had gone to Canada in
1913 and enlisted in 1914. Drafted to France with a Canadian Battalion
Transport unit, he was given home leave on three different occasions during the
Western Front campaigns, only to be severely wounded by shrapnel a mere two days
before the signing of the Armistice. He died in Druid's Cross Military Hospital
in Liverpool, on 16th February 1919, and was later given a soldier's funeral in
Stewarton cemetery. Private Robert Stirrat, another son of Stirrat the baker of
Lainshaw Street, also died in 1919, despite a series of remarkable escapes. He
saw service in France in 1916 before being in a ship torpedoed in the
Mediterranean in January 1917. He was rescued by a British trawler after
four and a half hours in the water. He was wounded in the second attack on
Gaza on April 19, 1917, and again in Palestine in the same year. He went
on to serve with the 52nd Division in France, as the war drew to a close in
1918, but after the Armistice contracted pneumonia, dying in Kilmarnock
Infirmary on August 6th, 1919.
|