Duncan Brown Grant was one of Bearsden’s three casualties on the first day of The Somme, 1st July 1916.
He joined the army when war broke out and joined the 10th Gordon Highlanders as a private, before being promoted to Corporal. The battalion landed in France after training on 9 July 1915. Duncan transferred to the Machine Gun Corps and was assigned to the 89th Company. These companies were equipped with Vickers machine guns which fired faster and further than the lighter Lewis guns the frontline battalions were equipped with so they would have provided fire support in attack or defence.
Vickers machine gun 1916 although I think the troops might be Canadian?
Duncan was wounded at the Battle of Loos in September (Milngavie and Bearsden Herald 8th October 1915):
He had recovered in time for the big attack on The Somme. (The Milngavie and Bearsden Herald says he was a sergeant but no other source confirms this.)
Duncan’s company were assigned to the 30th Division who were attacking on the right of the British line. Compared to the rest of the British attacks on this day, the attack on Montauban (Monty-Bong to the men) was relatively successful. Artillery cut the barbed wire and the Germans stayed in their bunkers for too long, resulting in many of them being taken prisoner.
This is a sketch of the British troops advancing having passed the German front line
However, somewhere along the way Duncan was killed. My guess is he was probably buried because the advance went well so there was an opportunity to do so, but the location of his grave was subsequently lost. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial:
Duncan was born on 29th January 1891 at 405 New Road, Camlachie (now Duke Street). His father, Andrew Brown Grant, was station master at Parkhead for North British Railways. This station was renamed Parkhead North and closed to passengers in 1955 (photo from 1950 via the excellent Railscot website link)
And here is the station next to the large industrial complex known as Parkhead Forge:
I’ve also ringed Parkhead Cross at the bottom of the map as a reference point.
Duncan’s mother was Bethia Russell Clark and he was her 9th child.
Around 1900 Andrew was appointed station master of the newly opened Hillfoot Station, Bearsden and in the 1901 Census the family lived at 5 Stewart Place:
Duncan was at school but two older sisters were saleswomen for soft goods (possibly in Glasgow, I don’t know of any Bearsden shops that sold soft goods at the time).
This is from the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald of 16 September 1910:
I cannot find a contemporary photo of the station but here is one from 1957, which may give some idea:
Again, this is taken from the RailScot website (link), with thanks.
When he left school (presumably at 14), Duncan went into the merchant navy. On Census Day 1911 he was at home with the family, which by this stage was at 8 Douglas Park Terrace:
His father is still the station master and his older sister Agnes is a newsagent. Douglas Park Terrace is not a name in use today, but local people will instantly recognize it as the shops on the railway bridge at Hillfoot:
And for those who fondly remember the Hillfoot Café, this is from 2011:
Looking at the Valuation Roll for 1915, there were four shops the first two being vacant, the third an ice cream shop (Clement Fargnola) and the fourth an iron merchant (presumably household hardware (Colonel Robert Howie):
On the same page you can see J. Douglas, who had joined the army but would soon die of TB (link), and Matthew B. Dickie, stepfather of AB Cook, then in Gallipoli but who would die before the end of the war in the Royal Flying Corps (link).
The Valuation Roll is not quite accurate as Andrew Grant retired in 1913. The Milngavie and Bearsden Herald of 7th March 1913 described the presentation to him, which I have reproduced here both because it is an interesting piece of social history but also contains an account of Andrew’s career.
Note that of the men quoted speaking in praise of Andrew Grant, Mr Carslaw of Camptower, Mr Reid of Inchanga and Mr Kirkwood of Dunbriton were all to lose a son in the coming war.
The other thing I notice is that the local newspaper sent someone to cover this, they attended in person and stayed throughout and the took a shorthand version of every word of the speeches which was the typeset for a small part of one page of that week’s edition.