"The son of Mr W. [William] Alexander, Burgess Terrace, Edinburgh, Lieutenant Alexander was born in 1893, and attended Watson's from 1900 to 1910. He left us to enter the service of the National Bank of Scotland. A keen athlete, he played football for Newington and Watsonian A teams, besides engaging enthusiastically in cricket and tennis. Joining the Black Watch in August 1914, he was gazetted to the Royal Scots in the following February, and went through some of the severe fighting after Loos, in which his battalion suffered heavily. Though he had reached the position of Acting Captain in his regiment, he applied for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps, and got his certificate as pilot in the record time of seven weeks. Returning to France in October, 1916, he was taken ill soon after with pleurisy, and after a gallant fight for life, died in Craigleith Hospital, Edinburgh, on 14th May 1917. In the opinion of the doctors, his death was due to gas poisoning received while with his regiment in 1915. He was interred with full military honours. He was immensely popular with his regiment. 'It was a great privilege to call John, friend. He was the most straightforward man I ever knew' -so wrote those who had been with him through the grim days after Loos."

The Watsonian, Vol. XIII, No. 3, July, 1917.

Watsonian's who died in the 1914-1918 war.

Harley is just to the right of the officers standing in the center of the photo. He is the fourth man to the right in the third row from the front. When this photo was taken, Harley had been a soldier for nine days.

Hamilton, Harley S., 657093, White, Winchester, O.; NA Manchester, O. 16 May '18, b. Berrysville, O. 30 3/12 yrs. Co D 29 Engrs to 5 Jun '18; Co F 603 Engrs to 24 Aug '18; Co D 29 Engrs to 14 Nov '18; Co B 29 Engrs to -; Co B 74 Engrs to disch. Pvt. AEF 10 Jun '18 to 11 Mar '19. Hon disch 22 Mar '19. (Source: The Official Roster of Ohio Soldiers, Sailors and Marines in the World War, 1917-18, Ohio Adjutant General's Department, 1926-29, The F. J. Heer Printing Co., Brown County Public Library, Georgetown, Ohio. vol. 7, p. 6836.)

The above entry in "The Official Roster..." might give the impression that Harley moved around within the Army quite a bit, but in fact these are almost entirely paper changes. Jesse Hinman, in his book, Ranging in France with Flash and Sound explains: "Company D was formed at Washington Barracks in June, 1918, but until arriving in France was known as Company F, 603rd Engineers." (p. 25). Elsewhere, concerning the return of the battalion after the armistice, he states: "The various sections began arriving in Toul on November 22,...and on the morning of Tuesday, March 11, we sailed up the Chesapeak Bay...At Camp Stuart [Newport News], the Battalion ceased to exist. While at Toul it had been changed from the 2nd Battalion, 29 Engineers, to 1st Battalion, 74th Engineers, and we were discharged as such." (pp. 234-237)

A Short Quote

...there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these...there are successively selected, during the French War, say thirty able-bodied men: Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer... Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straight-way the word "Fire!" is given: and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest!...Thier Governors had fallen out: and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.—Alas, so it is in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands...

Thomas Carlyle—Sartor Resartus 1833-34

A Bit from Podge's Memoir

John left school and started in the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1910. In August 1914 war was declared. No doubt my parents hoped that his bad hand and short arm would prevent him joining the army. I was at the school cadet camp and the family on holiday on 4th August, and I at once went to Kinghorn. John had joined the Black Watch. He used a battle cry 'steady the Black Watch' if Cecil or I annoyed him. He was transferred to the Royal Scots when he changed his battle cry to '1st of foot and right of the line' after a month or two (he was so worried that the war might stop before he got into action). He was disappointed too that uniforms were not available. But he got commissioned and then had a uniform. He was sent to Hawick... The battalion was sent to France early in 1915 and a few months later John was gassed on the Somme. Soon after rejoining the battalion he was transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. He was accepted and returned to a course at Stirling. In a matter of weeks he was back in France as a Pilot. He had 18 months flying and then was laid low with pleurisy. The lungs, already affected by gas, made no improvement with hospital treatment overseas and he was sent to hospital in the Isle of Wight, then to Yorkhill Hospital, Glasgow. Eventually he was brought to Craigleith Military Hospital Edinburgh, where Dr. Philip, later Sir Robert Philip, was making great progress with lung cases... I visited John every day after school and saw him lose weight, from 14 stone to 6 stone. He was sent home. It was only a few days. I used to hurry home from school to keep him company. I sat by his bedside one day, his arms were folded across his chest. The wristwatch slipped over his hand and dropped onto the carpet. I handed it to him. In a very normal voice he said 'you hang on to it Podge, I won't be needing it'. He died that night. The long strain had told on us all, and had lasting effects.

Family life must change when a country is at war. In 1914 the change was sudden. The effects, in my family, were disastrous. In spite of the misery and suffering many found war a unique experience that, when they returned to peaceful conditions, they felt a sense of achievement and were conscious of a manhood that they had never anticipated.

Rudyard Kipling summed it up in a few lines.
'Pity not the army gave, freedom to a timid slave...'
Freedom from a civil life of drudgery to which they were reluctant to return.

Rupert Brooke, the younger poet and a master of dreams, wrote of the boys who 'poured out the red sweet wine of youth...'

For cynicism we had Alfred Noyes' Victory Ball.
'They do not reproach because they know, if they are forgotten, 'tis better so.'

The attitude to death changed. No more drawn blinds. No more Widows' weeds. Cremation brought on the rushed good bye, and back to the office.

Before the days of motors we had horse drawn hearse. A long procession of men walked down the road where Billy Bonner lived. He was home from Merchiston Castle school one afternoon. He joined a procession. As the mourners gathered round the open grave to make way for the Minister, Billie pushed forward and fell into the grave. It was the only thing I ever knew to give him a shock.

Cecil Kerr, a school friend was two days my senior... Like all my school friends he had sympathised when my brother died. He asked me to have a meal with a brother, in the navy whose ship had arrived at Queensferry. We went to F & F's... Cecil suddenly said 'Podge, what about joining up? We get the King's shilling.' So we went to Cockburn Street and they made no query of our age: we had both just turned 17.

We arrived in France for the great push by the Germans in the Spring of 1918 and immediately went forward and joined the 2nd K.0.S.B., a great Regiment. I am surprised at men who retain for years and years many memories of active service. As recently as 1980 Cecil Kerr visited me from Australia and ran off names of the places we had been in during 1918. I remembered only incidents. Attending to wounded under fire and once, weeks after we joined the Battalion, being sent as assistant runner, to take back messages to Headquarters. The man I was accompanying, a gypsy called Taylor, asked me where I would like a blighty. He said he had managed to get quite a few of his co-runners home with wounds in a fleshy part of the arm or leg.

We were dug-in near Gauzeaucourt. A shallow trench with a small wood behind us. The German front line was very near. Part of the parapet was almost flat and a Corporal stood at one end to tell men moving along to duck, almost crawl. A young 2nd Lieut. who had joined us a few days before came along. He listened carefully to the Corporal then, still erect, he walked on. Two paces only and the sniper got him. Bravery or folly, who can judge. It was that young officer's way of showing an example to his men.

In the beginning of November the final push took place. We found ourselves behind our own supporting artillery. Orders had come through to take as few prisoners as possible. We were passing some very deep trenches the enemy had occupied for years. Very deep, bunk beds safe from heavy artillery and air attack. To be on the safe side a soldier had chucked a Mills Grenade down one entrance; four Germans came out another entrance. We watched as a Sergeant shot them: At that moment the war was nearly over and the man who entered my mind's eye was P. Watt, who had joined-up at the very beginning of the war, had been through so much, and was in the machine gun brigade and having a meal in a hut well back from the line in April 1918, when a shell, almost a stray, hit the hut and P. was killed. Home on leave in 1916 he had tried to persuade me to concentrate on cricket rather than tennis, and promised to buy me a complete outfit when the war was over.

Another Short Quote

In London the ladies were agog, for the fall fashion shows were the most exciting, the most fabulous, in generations. Outside the salons private motorcars swarmed; within, closely packed throngs of women watched as gorgeously attired models toured the rooms. "Is there a war?" inquired Lady Sarah Wilson testily in the Tatler. But it was the war that had created the craze...It was regrettably true, as Colonel Repington had pointed out, that many people seemed to be enjoying the war. A new set of bureaucrats entrenched in minor power was fearful that peace might break out, and there were cries of treason when the Nation reported in October that five million pamphlets on peace negotiations had been dropped into letter boxes...

For millions the war was a provocative change and a huge game, as well as source of profit—though the pound note had shrunk in value to the equivalent of ten shillings before the war... Saturday-night crowds in the City were enormous; in restaurants, night clubs and theaters, earls and seamstresses, welders and landed gentry intermingled with increasing naturalness. Perhaps the pleasures were nervous ones as 1917 waned, the laughter too brittle, wages and prices and fun equally inflated; and perhaps beneath the excitement, the self-conscious committees, the love-making, the proud headlines, the drinking, and the heavy spending there flowed a riptide of pain and disillusionment, anxiety and overwork.

Thus in London the days passed feverishly, and fewer and fewer could pretend to remember why the war went on.

Leon Wolff—In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign