Battle of Loos

battle of loos

THE MASSIVE EFFECT BACK HOME

Few areas in Scotland were unaffected by the battle, some far

more than others. Families were devastated. Mr and Mrs Richard

Dunn, 527 Dalmarnock Road, Glasgow, lost three sons on 25 and 26

September.

The youngest, Col MacDonald Dunn, was serving with

9th Cameronians at the time of his death. His elder brothers,

Archibald and Richard Dunn, were both serving with 6th Cameron

Highlanders. The names of all three brothers appear on the Loos

Memorial. Local newspapers were strewn with obituaries, accounts

of the battle, and letters from friends and relatives desperate

for any news of missing soldiers.

The date became seared in Scotland’s collective memory. Dundee

arranged a memorial service for 4th Black Watch, ‘Dundee’s Own’,

in St Mary’s on 6 October 1915, a day ‘set apart by the city for

giving public expression to the sorrow and pride with which the

recent victory in Flanders had endowed it’.

Each year the anniversary of Loos had a particular resonance in

Dundee. On Sunday, 25 September 1921, an open-air commemorative

service on Magdalen Green marked the occasion. The Reverend

Mr Bruce ‘reminded those present that six years ago that day

the dead were lying in great numbers on the field of Loos. These

men fell for liberty, and we owed a deep debt of gratitude to

them’.

This debt saw the Loos anniversary occupy a prominent

place in Scotland’s annual calendar in the immediate post-war

decades until the renewal of hostilities in 1939.

Each September Dundee’s ex-service associations staged a

well-attended drumhead service in Dudhope Park. This solemn

act of remembrance was repeated in communities across the

country. But it was Dundee’s War Memorial, unveiled on 16 May

1925, that proved a lasting monument to the Battle of Loos. The

bronze brazier at its summit, an integral part of its design,

is lit each anniversary to commemorate the city’s losses on

25 September 1915, ‘her fallen heroes’.

The beacon, clearly

visible on the height of Dundee Law, has been a fixed reminder

of the men who went ‘over the hill’, its light an appropriate

tribute to all who gave their lives at Loos.

72 Daily Record and Mail, Tuesday, 26 October 1915, 3.

73 People’s Journal, Saturday, 9 October 1915, 9.

74 The Courier and Argus, Monday, 26 September 1921, 3.

75 People’s Journal, Saturday, 9 October 1915, 9.

76 T. Royle, The Flowers of the Forest (Edinburgh, 2007), 91.