32 / 44
30
battle of loos
MOST CONSPICUOUS BRAVERY
Despite the sacrifice of 44th and 46th Brigades, Hill 70 remained
in German hands. The 15th (Scottish) Division’s 45th Brigade,
comprising 13th Royal Scots, 7th Royal Scots Fusiliers, and
11th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, was given responsibility
for its capture. The assault began at 9.00 a.m. on Sunday,
26 September, but the attackers found it impossible to force the
Germans from the redoubt, and were eventually forced to retire.
During the action Private Robert Dunsire, 13th Royal Scots,
a miner from Buckhaven in Fife, rescued two wounded men from
between the firing lines, under continuous enemy fire. ‘I can’t
tell you how I escaped being hit, as I was a good target running
about 100 yards with a man on my back’.
48
When a senior officer
congratulated him on his conduct, Dunsire replied ‘anybody could
have done the same’.
49
He would receive the Victoria Cross for
his ‘most conspicuous bravery’.
THE VICTORIA CROSS
The initiative was now with the German defenders, and in an
attempt to salvage the situation Lieutenant-Colonel Angus
Douglas Hamilton, the 54 year old commanding officer of 6th
Camerons, personally led his battalion against Hill 70 on four
occasions before he was mortally wounded. With the words ‘I must
get up, I must get up!’, he passed away.
50
Douglas Hamilton was
awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his selfless gallantry,
one of five awarded to Scots for the battle of Loos.
Further north, 9th (Scottish) Division were also enduring
German counter attacks. The inexperienced 73rd Brigade,
24th Division, had relieved 26th Brigade on 26 September,
but were soon in difficulties. Fosse No. 8 was recaptured on
27 September, and the enemy now threatened the Hohenzollern
Redoubt. Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon, 8th Black Watch, fourth
son of the Earl of Strathmore, with a small composite force
of Black Watch and 5th Camerons, was sent forward to secure
the ground. He successfully stopped the German advance but was
killed in a bombing attack.
51
Later, 26th Brigade would hold
the Hohenzollern Redoubt under heavy shrapnel fire until relieved
early on the morning of 28 September.
48 The Edinburgh Evening News, Saturday, 20 November 1915, 4.
49 Ibid.
50 J. Stewart and J. Bunchan, The Fifteenth (Scottish) Division 1914-1919 (Edinburgh, 1926), 44
51 A. G. Wauchope, A History of the Black Watch in the Great War, Vol. III (London, 1926), 14.