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Remembered Today:

Wauchope's History of the Black Watch in the Great War 1914-1918


Skipman

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Mike

Great timing; this may be the impetus I need to try and locate the position of a dugout where a mortar round killed five privates of C Company, 8th Battalion on 1st January 1917. One of them was Donald Sloan who has appeared in the forum before and who is one of my footballers. I found a quote about the incident from Wauchope so it will be good to read around the extract. I fear that the location will be in the housing estate on the north side of the Scarpe just before downtown St Laurent-Blagny but you never know.

I am in your debt sir.

Pete.

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I haven't Mike, I've rather parked this one as I fear the location won't be as photogenic as say Mash Valley or the Tunnel Trench area near Fontaine. I think whoever made the post in the thread on brothers killed about the Sloan boys may have had access. I know the battalion were in I sector which was deduced to be down towards the river. Is the Brigade diary downloadable or do I need to Kew up?

Pete.

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Show off. :thumbsup:

Mike

If you've got it, flaunt it as they say.
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It should be there Pete, but I'm not seeing it Click

Mike

Thanks for trying mate, I think I may throw myself on the mercy of the forum. I do tend to get confused between battalion, brigade and division war diaries; it's really just a question of which one has the locations of each battalion in the line and then each company if possible. The Wauchope work will give me the context and then it's just trying to narrow the location of the bunker down. If as I suspect it's in the middle of someone's garden it's not going to make much of a photograph. Donald Sloan is buried at Faubourg d'Amiens and the Memorial to the Missing is a pretty awesome backdrop so that should suffice.

Pete.

P.S. Liking your poppies by the way.

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Thanks for trying mate, I think I may throw myself on the mercy of the forum. I do tend to get confused between battalion, brigade and division war diaries; 9th (Scottish) Division, 26th Infantry Brigade Headquarters, and 8th Battalion Black Watch. I see the other Brigade diaries, but I don't see the one for January 1917?

Pete.

P.S. Liking your poppies by the way. Cheers, it's a cracker.

Mike

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  • 2 years later...

As we approach 100 years since Donald Sloan's death I've been working on a tribute to him; I'd stored the link to the online version of Wauchope's history but now I go back to it I find that the link to the 8th Battalion section in the index doesn't work for me.

 

Can anyone point out which schoolboy error I am making? Alternatively can does anyone know which sections of the line the 8th Black Watch held between the end of the battle of Loos, their epic involvement at Longueval in July 1916, their return to the mud of the Butte de Warlencourt in October and Donald's death near St Laurent-Blagny on New Years Day 1917? I don't think I can assume that they went back to Arras each time, no worries if not.

 

Pete.

 

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24 minutes ago, Skipman said:

Works ok for me Pete. Try this link Click

 

Mike

 

Thanks Mike. I get the same thing as when I tried before, a blank screen in a rather nice shade of green, it's my laptop I fear. It has not recovered from Microsoft's attempt to make me install Windows 10 and a period using Explorer when Firefox wouldn't load Javascript. Between those two events I seem to have accumulated loads of monitoring software which means a service host takes up one of the processors at all times. The monitors are monitoring the other half and each other and slowing everything down to a crawl. I need to go back to a system disk I made ages ago and rebuild the whole thing, but it is having the time. If only I had the processing power available at Skipman Acres.............:unsure:

 

Pete.

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Slightly off topic but I've just this minute been reading about the Battle of Magersfontein in the Boer War, and there is mention of a Lieutenant A G Wauchope, who was ADC to his cousin , General Wauchope, who commanded the Highland Brigade and was killed in the battle. Quite a co-incidence if, as I assume, it's the same chap.

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The A G Wauchope killed at Magersfontein was Andrew Gilbert Wauchope, the author of the Black Watch history was Arthur Grenfell Wauchope. Not certain of the relationship.

 

Mike

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2 hours ago, Skipman said:

It opens with adobe flash player. Try updating it?

 

Mike

 

Hi Mike, went to the Adobe site, downloaded the latest version, it also tried to download two bits of software that I didn't want, uninstalled them, and tried the link again. Same blue green screen, I might remember the shade for when I redecorate next but it's not getting me any closer to where the 8th were when they weren't fighting in 1916. Thanks for all your help mate, I really appreciate it.

 

Pete.

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"The greater part of January 1916 was spent by the 8th in billets just south of Bailleul"

"On the 24th the 9th Division began to take over the Ploegsteert line from the 25th Division"

"On May 30th the battalion was relieved in the trenches by the 15th Hampshire Regiment, and went into reserve billets at Creslow, moving back to Steenje the following day, the division being then in corps reserve.

Edited by Derek Black
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4 minutes ago, Derek Black said:

"The greater part of January 1916 was spent by the 8th in billets just south of Bailleul"

"On the 24th the 9th Division began to take over the Ploegsteert line from the 25th Division"

"On May 30th the battalion was relieved in the trenches by the 15th Hampshire Regiment, and went into reserve billets at Creslow, moving back to Steenje the following day, the division being then in corps reserve.

 

Thanks Derek. Skippy has fixed me up with the relevant pages from Wauchope so I should be ok, I am very grateful to him and yourself. I'm building my article around the changing nature of trench warfare, as I write about the Everton players who were killed I try to give each one some context and highlight a different aspect of the war so that both my readers will get a sense of the wider picture.

 

All I have got to do now is to fix the %$*&(*£^ laptop........:angry2:

 

Pete.

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4 hours ago, David Filsell said:

I seem to recall its a pretty ground history and well mapped.

 

David, that was my impression when I read bits of it last year, that was before my laptop decided to become a Sinclair ZX81......

 

Pete.

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I look forward to the 2nd volume.

 

Hopefully she's scouring every library and archive (public and personal) in the land for memoirs, documents and items. Soe statistical analysis wouldn't go amiss either in order to produce the ultimate book on the regiment and it's experiences in WW1.

 

I have high expectations.

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Derek. I haven't read the first volume as it doesn't relate to the period I'm interested in. Were you impressed with her work in that volume?

 

I wonder if she can shed any light on the period October 1914.

 

Mike

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  • 2 months later...

This is a fascinating book. I have recently researched 13 men of Brixton in Devon who were killed in the Great War and appear on our War Memorial. One of these soldiers was Lt Frederick Neil Edmonstone Kitson of 5th Battalion Black Watch. Here is his story and a newspaper cutting. In the book he is recorded as dying of his wounds on 15th Sept 1917. I believe this may be incorrect because all my research indicates exactly one year earlier. Possibly a typing error in the book.

 

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Edited by Lawryleslie
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