Lance Corporal James HUSKIE

Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders 7th Battalion B Company

Service Number: 2334

Date of Death: 25 April 1915 (CWGC: 26 April)

Age at Death: 32

Family: Third son of the late James and Catherine Huskie, Flesher’s Close, Carronshore; brother of David (q.v.)

James Huskie was a pattern-filer at Mungal Foundry. He had belonged for four years to the Carronshore Company of the Volunteer Force (the predecessor to the Territorial Force). On 8 September 1914, he enlisted with the Territorial Battalion of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. The Battalion went to the Western Front in the middle of December 1914.

Exactly a week before his death, James was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. He was killed in the Battle of St Julien (25 April -4 May).

This battle, which was the first major piece of fighting the battalion was involved in, was the second phase of the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April-5 May, 1915).

The battalion war diary recorded that 6 officers and 100 other ranks were killed, but 150 men were posted missing and this was to double the number of other ranks who were killed in this attack. The total number of casualties in the battalion was over 500.

On the next day, the battalion was to be in support but did not leave the trenches they held. This was just as well for the 26th April 1915 was “a truly disastrous day”. There were 4,000 casualties on a mile-wide front. “Men were lost in totally fruitless and ill-prepared attacks against an enemy that was reasonably well-prepared and was superior in numbers and artillery.”

A letter, which clearly indicates that James Huskie’s death occurred on 25 April, (the first day of the battle), was sent to his brother by Private Robert Lindsay, dated April 28:

It is with great grief that I write to let you know that James fell on Sunday in a charge, but he fell a fearless death. I am very sorry to be the first to convey the news to you but I thought it best... and my heart goes out in sympathy to you in this trying time. We buried him last night with some of his comrades, and he had a pleasing smile on his face. I shall never forget this as long as I have breath in me. I don’t know how I escaped, but thank God I am alive today. I was looking for ‘it’ every minute, but the Lord knows best when to call us home.

Lance Corporal Huskie’s grave was lost in the subsequent fighting as his death is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial. Menin Gate Memorial, Ieper, Belgium Panel 42 and 44.

Military Operations France and Belgium, 1915 Volume II J E Edmonds, 1928, page 240

Magnificent But Not War The Battle for Ypres 1915, John Dixon, 2003, page 139