*blissflowers

While I was away in Belgium I took a photo of a thistle and a cross placed at the bottom of a list of men whose bodies were never found in WW1 for a man called Donald Buchanan.


He was from the Isle of Lismore, a small island off the West Coast of Scotland
[link]

and one of my friends- the one who saw the cross and the thistle in the first place- contacted the island and we found out some information.
So my photo now has some context - I now understand a little of the man who was remembered at Tyne Cot cemetery.
Donald Buchanan was killed on 25th September 1917 at the age of was 27.
Fighting with the 2nd Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlands he may well have fought in the same part of the Battle of Passchendaele [link] with my grand dad who was in the 4th Battalion of the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry

Donald was born on the 24th August 1890 at Drumskeachan, Lismore.He was a son of Hugh and Maggie (nee Buchanan). His parents were 2nd cousins- hence the same surname.
When he was killed his dad was already dead but his mum was alive.
The 1901 census shows that he had one older brother, one younger brothers and a younger sister.

So I now know a bit more about the person who someone left a a cross and a thistle for over 90 years after they were killed and I will always remember Donald Buchanan.


Update 7th May 2008
I've found out more
Donald was a tailor on Lismore – by all accounts a handsome and generally lovely bloke: my stepfather’s father knew him and says he had ‘that little bit extra about him’. It seems that the girls liked him and this irked some of the young men on the island! He tried to join up when war was declared but was found to be unfit because he’d recently undergone an appendectomy. A newspaper article reporting on his death says that he was called up in January 1917, although I am not certain if this is the case. He certainly went into the 2nd btn Argylls. The battalion war diary records that this unit was in the line in the Ypres Salient on the evening of 25 / 26 September 1917, during Third Ypres. This was the start of the Battle of Polygon Wood, where the Australians went on to lose a lot of men in some extremely bitter fighting. The Argylls started off from the wood known as Stirling Castle and crossed the Menin Road towards the NE corner of Polygon Wood, known as ‘Black Watch Corner’. Around this time, ‘A’ and ‘C’ coys came under very heavy shellfire and communications were cut. The war diary records that the OC ‘sent several runners [to HQ], but only one got through.’ Unfortunately, Donald was one of those who volunteered for the task and was killed in the attempt. His friend, Charles Cameron – also from Lismore – was with him when he died. He records that Donald was ‘struck by a piece of shrapnel’, although jis family were told that he was shot by a sniper. His body would have been lost in the fighting that followed, so he is commemorated at Tyne Cot. It seems that Donald’s sister was devastated by the loss of her much loved big brother. She kept everything that he sent and his niece still has these keepsakes, including his field Bible which was sent home after his death.

‘Fare thee well my home of yore

I may not see thee any more

And though I lie on foreign shore

I love thee still…’

part of a poem written by Donald Buchanan before he left for war