Second Lieutenant Douglas Gillespie went to France with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in February 1915. Before he went, Douglas Gillespie was highly aware of the dangers which he might face: his younger brother, Tom - who won a silver medal for rowing in the 1912 Olympics - had been killed only a few months before in fighting near La Bassée on 18 October 1914.
On his arrival at the front, Douglas Gillespie found himself in a relatively calm sector of the British trenches. This enabled him to write extensively about his experiences in his letters home. His letters focus on the personal and domestic details of an Infantry Battalion at the front - soldiers eating, drinking, writing letters home, and getting into occasional trouble, between being shelled, mortared and sniped at. Douglas Gillespie's letters reveal a richness of detail about the day-to-day life of soldiers in trenches and in billets.
For Douglas Gillespie, the period of calm ended with the Battle of Loos, which started on 25 September 1915 . In his last letter home, written on 23 September 1915, he wrote: "Before long I think we shall be in the thick of it, for if we do attack, my company will be one of those in front, and I am likely to lead it ... I have no forebodings ... so many of my friends will charge by my side .... Tom himself will be here to help me, and give me courage ...". Three days after writing this letter, Douglas Gillespie was killed in the Battle of Loos.
When Douglas Gillespie's kit was returned to his parents after his death, it contained a copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, with a mark on the page which had this as its final sentence:
'Then I entered into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and had no light, for almost half the way through it. I thought I should have been killed there, over and over; but at last day broke, and the sun rose, and I went through that which was behind with far more ease and quiet.'
Extracts from the letters:
I forgot to tell you that in our last trenches one man spotted a hare sitting in a field behind us; he knocked it over at 130 yards and in an hour it was soup. ...
***
It's curious to be out in front of the lines after dark, the place looks so different from that side. There are a couple of solitary graves, beside an old farm road ... The war must have come upon these farms very quickly, for almost all the cattle have been killed, and they still trouble us. But a gunner who was here then described to me how he had seen men dash out from their trenches, in spite of the snipers, and run along to cut a steak from the bullocks, and back again. For in these days rations were not so plentiful as they are now, and fresh meat still scarcer.
***
We are about 150 yards from the Germans ... Almost every regiment in the British Army seems to have been here in turn— Scots Guards, Devons, Irish Rifles, Lancashire Fusiliers, Cameronians, Royal Scots; you can see their wooden crosses standing here and there among the grass. Last night I was patrolling out in front, and actually saw a lot of Germans working on their parapet, and also a patrol who came within 30 yards of us. Two of them stayed beside a tree, and we lay there for a couple of hours, just about 20 yards away ...We were so close to the German trenches that I could smell the smoke of a German cigar—quite a good one too—
***
Our bomb officer ... learnt earlier in the day that he had got the Military Cross ... We have been very peaceful here to-day; the Germans are 350 yards away on our right, and nearly 1000 yards straight in front, with a wide field of blood red poppies inbetween ...
On his arrival at the front, Douglas Gillespie found himself in a relatively calm sector of the British trenches. This enabled him to write extensively about his experiences in his letters home. His letters focus on the personal and domestic details of an Infantry Battalion at the front - soldiers eating, drinking, writing letters home, and getting into occasional trouble, between being shelled, mortared and sniped at. Douglas Gillespie's letters reveal a richness of detail about the day-to-day life of soldiers in trenches and in billets.
For Douglas Gillespie, the period of calm ended with the Battle of Loos, which started on 25 September 1915 . In his last letter home, written on 23 September 1915, he wrote: "Before long I think we shall be in the thick of it, for if we do attack, my company will be one of those in front, and I am likely to lead it ... I have no forebodings ... so many of my friends will charge by my side .... Tom himself will be here to help me, and give me courage ...". Three days after writing this letter, Douglas Gillespie was killed in the Battle of Loos.
When Douglas Gillespie's kit was returned to his parents after his death, it contained a copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, with a mark on the page which had this as its final sentence:
'Then I entered into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and had no light, for almost half the way through it. I thought I should have been killed there, over and over; but at last day broke, and the sun rose, and I went through that which was behind with far more ease and quiet.'
Extracts from the letters:
I forgot to tell you that in our last trenches one man spotted a hare sitting in a field behind us; he knocked it over at 130 yards and in an hour it was soup. ...
***
It's curious to be out in front of the lines after dark, the place looks so different from that side. There are a couple of solitary graves, beside an old farm road ... The war must have come upon these farms very quickly, for almost all the cattle have been killed, and they still trouble us. But a gunner who was here then described to me how he had seen men dash out from their trenches, in spite of the snipers, and run along to cut a steak from the bullocks, and back again. For in these days rations were not so plentiful as they are now, and fresh meat still scarcer.
***
We are about 150 yards from the Germans ... Almost every regiment in the British Army seems to have been here in turn— Scots Guards, Devons, Irish Rifles, Lancashire Fusiliers, Cameronians, Royal Scots; you can see their wooden crosses standing here and there among the grass. Last night I was patrolling out in front, and actually saw a lot of Germans working on their parapet, and also a patrol who came within 30 yards of us. Two of them stayed beside a tree, and we lay there for a couple of hours, just about 20 yards away ...We were so close to the German trenches that I could smell the smoke of a German cigar—quite a good one too—
***
Our bomb officer ... learnt earlier in the day that he had got the Military Cross ... We have been very peaceful here to-day; the Germans are 350 yards away on our right, and nearly 1000 yards straight in front, with a wide field of blood red poppies inbetween ...
