Andrew McKechnie

The National Library of Scotland has a film online shot in 1941 and 1942 of Bearsden's Home Guard unit in various situations - at a formal march past, on parade, rifle training, training with other weapons, etc.  To see the full 12 minute film click here, but I have used a few screen shots including the one at the start of this profile.  I don't know the names of the men but they would have known Andrew McKechnie.

They are all sergeants in the 3rd Dunbartonshire Battalion of the Home Guard, the volunteer civil defence force formed in 1940 when German invasion threatened to defend the country and carry out more routine military tasks to free trained soldiers for fighting.  Andrew was another one of the sergeants.

Some of the film is worthy of Dad's Army, the BBC TV comedy of the 1960s and 1970s, but other parts are a reminder this was serious.  the above photo looks like a briefing ahead of an exercise late in the evening.  The following shows the unit advancing through smoke laid down as part of an exercise:

Exercises also took place in the winter and the men are assembled for what looks like a briefing with the snow in the background:

While the film is known to cover the winter of 1941-1942 we don't know the dates of the individual sections.  It's possible the one in the photo above was on the morning of Sunday 7th December 1941.  If not then it would have been one like it, when Sergeant Andrew McKechnie started to feel ill.  He was sent home (19 Hillcrest Avenue), but despite help from men of his unit he died of a coronary thrombosis (heart attack) on the footpath in Leven Drive, just a few yards from his front door at 12.30pm.

Andrew was born 46 years earlier, on 20th March 1895 at 5 Back Street, Renton.  His parents were James, a fish merchant, and Mary Ann Murray, a dye-work hand, although they were not married until a month after his birth.

The 1901 Census finds them living in a flat at 106 Main Street, Bonhill.  Andrew had three sisters (?, Mary and Elizabeth) and a brother (John).  This is a photo of Main Street, Bonhill about that time, although I am unsure whether it includes number 106:

Andrew served in the First World War, possibly in the Cameron Highlanders.  If so, he finished the war as a corporal, being discharged on Christmas Eve 1918.

By this stage Andrew and his parents lived at 1 Agnes Drive in Govan, which was renamed Cara Drive when Govan became part of Partick for local government purposes.

On 8th March 1921, Andrew (occupation fish merchant's assistant) married Rachel, also Mckechnie, a sewing machinist from Helensburgh.  In the 1921 Census a few months later Andrew and Rachel are living with her family at 5 East Clyde Street (six adults and a child living in a three-room flat).

By 1935 Andrew and Rachel lived at 19 Hillcrest Avenue, very likely they were the first owners of the property.  His occupation is recorded as fish merchant.

I have not been able to find out if Andrew had a particular shop, or whether his business was in buying and selling fish.  I'm aware there was an established fish merchant carrying the Mckechnie name but cannot be certain what links Andrew had to it.  however, he would surely have known the Glasgow Fish Market:

 

Footnote

7th December 1941 is "a date that will live in infamy", the surprise Japanese attack on the American Pacific Fleet at its base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  This started at 6.18pm GMT.