Donald Buchanan Daye

Donald Buchanan Daye was born on 14th April 1883 in Gibson Street in the west end of Glasgow.  happily there is a photo of the street (the first Glasgow electric tram ran in 1896 but there do not seem to be any motor vehicles yet so my guess is the year 1900):

Here is the equivalent modern view:

He was the second of four siblings, an elder brother John and two younger sisters, Elizabeth and Jane.  His father, Thomas, gave his occupation as master plumber; he had been married to Christina for three years and they may have settled here because Christina's family was from the area.

Donald's early years were spent on Great Western Road, first in a flat at number 162 (close to St George's Cross) in 1891 and then in 1901 at number 437 which is the tenement overlooking the bridge over the River Kelvin:

Aged 17, Donald was an apprentice plumber (with Fyfe & Allan Ltd, plumbers and gasfitters of 43 St George's Road) while his 16-year old sister, Elizabeth, was a clerk.

We don't know what happened but Donald decided following in his father's footsteps was not for him.  He served his 7 years' apprenticeship, but at the end of that, in 1907, we find him boarding a ship called the Orotava in London on 23rd August bound for Australia to emigrate, one of around 16,000 Scots who did so between 1906 and 1916.

The Orotava was operated by Royal Mail and carried over 600 passengers via the Suez Canal.  Donald arrived in Brisbane on 11th October after a six-week voyage.

In 1913 he appears on the electoral roll at Gladstone, Capricornia, Queensland, where his occupation was miner:

I think I can hear his father muttering, "Halfway round the world to become a miner, he could have done that half an hour from home!" (possibly with a few bad words thrown in ...)  But Gladstone is a coastal city with some beautiful views:

Together with the climate, we can maybe understand why Donald picked this over a deep-seam mine in Ayrshire or Lanarkshire!

Back in Bearsden, his father's business was thriving.  The Milngavie and Bearsden Herald has many adverts for the firm Stalker & Daye, gasfitters and plumbers from January 1903 onwards, initially specifying a shop on Great Western Road as well as Bearsden.  The final advert on 13th January 1928 was:

I suspect Lyngarth (where the Dayes were tenants) was one of the houses on the west side of Drymen Road, north of Norwood Park but south of Ellergreen Road.  Note the spelling of Eaton Place has been changed (unilaterally?) to Eton Place.

But in 1914 when war was declared in Europe, Australia joined the Allied side ( as would be expected of a part of the Empire).  Donald enlisted in the Australian army on 6th July 1915.  On his papers he is described as 5 feet, 4 and a half inches tall (about 164 cm), dark complexion, brown hair and brown eyes.  His height is of more significance than allowing us to imagine him - up until June 1915 recruits had to be a minimum of 5 feet and 6 inches, so we can see Donald enlisted as soon as he was eligible.  (This may have spared him the fighting in the ANZAC battles on the Gallipoli Peninsula).

In early November 1915 he was on a troopship bound for Egypt as a part of the 7th Training Battalion.  On March 4th 1916 he joined 12th Battalion at Zeitoun in Egypt.  On 29th March they left Alexandria on another troopship, the Corsican, bound for Marseilles.  

Built by Barclay Curle in the Scotstoun yard, 1907

From there they travelled north to acclimatise and train, then take over a sector of the frontline trenches on the Western Front.

Arriving on the Somme they were still in reserve on the first day of battle but moved through Albert on July 20th, and into the reserve trenches on the 21st. The Australians were to attack and capture the village of Pozieres, which had been an objective of the first day of the Somme battle, three very bloody weeks earlier.  (As he moved up with his battalion, Donald may have passed the spot where another Bearsden man, Robert Reid, had been fatally wounded just over a week earlier (click here)).

This is the modern view on Google Earth looking to the north-east - note the main road running from bottom left to top right.  This was roughly the direction of the Australians' attack.

The attack went in on the night of the 22nd-23rd, with good success.  The artillery barrage (which included gas shells) had done its job and the village was captured.  However, this success was limited by the confusion always likely in a night attack and the tendency of the barrage to have obliterated many reference points for navigation.

This was the only Allied success in the Somme sector on the 23rd so the Germans concentrated artillery against it and sent in counter-attacks, which were beaten off.

On July 24th Donald received a gunshot wound in his left thigh.  We don't know the circumstances but the battalion war diary refers to a covering party sent out from the Australian trenches to protect engineers digging a strong-point.  Given that a gunshot wound in the leg seems unlikely when on defensive duties in a trench, this seems like a good candidate for when it happened.

He was three days in a casualty clearing station behind the line and was then sent to the 1st Stationary Hospital at Rouen but he died two days later and is buried with other men who died in the hospitals located in that city:

It's always poignant to read of the inventory of effects sent to the next-of-kin, in Donald's case his father Thomas:

In this case, we also have the reply from Thomas:

Thomas's writing is not easy to read; he acknowledges receipt of the package "but do[es] not admit that they were the effects of the late 2327 Pte D. Daye".  It's not clear why he believed this.

As a footnote, Donald's younger sister, Jane, had married James Theodore Boyack in 1913, only for him to be killed in 1917 about 15 miles from where Donald was fatally injured (click here for his story)