George Walker Moir

 

Many thanks to Margaret for the photo.

George Walker Moir was 23 when he died during a phase of the Battle of The Somme.  He was a Lance-Corporal with the 5th Battalion of the Scottish Rifles (known as the Cameronians).  Having been spared the horrors of the first day of the battle on 1st July, the 33rd Division was transferred to the Somme as part of a subsequent attack.  On 15th July, George's brigade, the 91st, deployed by Mametz Wood and listened to the sounds of the first wave going in.  John Duvoisin, whose home was Cairnbank on Roman Road, was killed less than a mile away as his platoon tried to provide protection against fire coming from the flank of his battalion.  You can read his story by clicking here.

George was described as thorough and thoughtful, and a fine example to his men.

When George's battalion went into the front line on 16th July it was just to the east of the village of Bazentin (Bazentin-le-Petit as it was known at the time):

Mametz Wood is in the bottom left hand corner.  Just to the right of Bazentin you can see a cemetery and windmill marked - this is where the battalion deployed, facing approximately north-north-west towards the enemy trench labelled "German Switch" at the top of the map.  High Wood was also strongly held.

From near to the Windmill, this is the modern view back to Bazentin (white buildings just visible):

Pivoting, here is the view to High Wood:

The German trenches were about 700 yards away but it seems the British position was overlooked by the Germans; in the move from Mametz Wood to the Cemetery-Windmill trench the battalion suffered 70 casualties from enemy shellfire (mainly wounded, only five deaths are recorded).

The following day, the 17th, the battalion's war diary reported "orders were given to dig in a sap post of 15 men to keep a new German work under observation, and harass them as much as possible.  This was carried out."

This is an example of a sap, a trench dug perpendicular to the front line going out into "no man's land".  In the photo it looks to be the start of an attack but in the Bazentin case it would probably have ended into a short trench to allow the British troops to 'harass' the Germans.  We can place George here, because in a letter to his parents another soldier wrote George and the other snipers were "in an advanced post where we had gone to prevent the Germans making new trenches near us and he was just his old self - very cool, and enjoying himself as he regarded war as a great game."

On the 18th George was acting orderly to the commanding officer (colonel) of the battalion when (probably in the afternoon) a shell fragment hit him in the chest and he died before he could reach a field ambulance.  He was buried at Mametz, and on 24th July 1919 his body was re-buried in a permanent grave at Flat Iron Copse - this can be seen on the map above, just to the left of Mametz Wood in the bottom-left corner.

From the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald of 28th July 1916 (John Duvoisin's obituary is on the same page of the newspaper):

TP Spens, one of the men who wrote to George's parents after his death (see third last paragraph above) is very probably Walter Thomas Patrick Spens, and you can read his profile here:

He died of pneumonia on 18th February 1917.

Gordon was born on 2^nd June 1893 at 118 Kirkland Street, on the corner with Maryhill Road just by Queens Cross:

The nearest I could find to this address is this photo:The corner of Kirkland Street is on the extreme right.  Many of the buildings have been demolished since and 118 Kirkland Street is no exception:

When George was born his father, Gordon, gave his occupation as a schools inspector.  He married George's mother, Mary Ewing, in 1889.  Gordon had an older sister, Mary, and an older brother, Gordon.

By the time George was 8 years old, the family were living at 8 Douglas Place at Bearsden Cross (1901 Census) and in 1911 their address was 22 New Kirk Square.  By this stage his father's occupation was "school attendance officer and janitor", while his sister Mary was a "shop assistant draper" and his brother Gordon was a "bank clerk".

I've complained before about how hard it is to track addresses at Bearsden Cross over time but here are my best guesses at 8 Douglas Place:

I believe number 8 was the small shop on the left, opposite the entrance to the car park on Douglas Place/Roman Road.  I have previously described that the modern car park was previously the grounds in front of Cairnbank (click here) - and if this sounds familiar it was mentioned at the start of this post as the home of John Duvoisin, the man who died as George's troops waited.

This is my guess at 22 New Kirk Square, the flats above Co-op Bearsden Funeralcare: 

George attended New Kilpatrick Higher Grade School, what we would now call Bearsden Primary School, at the Cross.  He was a bright and popular boy (young man), and went on to Clydebank Junior Student Centre as a student teacher.  He spoke excellent French.

He joined the territorial army and served for four years before 1914, winning prizes for shooting.  we don't know for certain but it would have been natural for him to have joined up soon after war was declared in August 1914.

The local newspaper recounts that George was on a raid of the German trenches in the autumn of 1915 and returned with a banner saying "Warsaw has fallen" (to the advancing Germans in August 1915).

George died in July 1916, his father died of acute nephritis as a complication of routine surgery in December of the same year.  His elder brother, Gordon, died in India while in the army in 1919.  His mother, having lost a husband and two sons in three years, left Bearsden presumably to be with family in Cowdenbeath.