MILITARY ECHOES
Angus Martin
An Explanation: The following mish-mash of jottings
was originally a part of 'By Hill and Shore', but became so extensive and
self-contained that it finally seemed perverse not to detach it from the
parent body and give it a life of its own. So much material, indeed, has
accumulated that this feature will be continued in the next issue, and perhaps
beyond, if there is sufficient interest.
John Armour Jr, in a field at East Backs, found a belt-buckle which had belonged to a member of the Campbeltown Rifle Volunteers and which was presumably dumped there with the town dung. There is an identical buckle, complete with waist-belt, on display in Campbeltown Museum. The clasp bears the Campbeltown coat of arms, and the exhibit is dated 1859.
On the very day that John Armour described the belt-buckle to me, Donald Irwin obtained the key to Drumlemble Village Hall and showed me a stone plaque mounted inside the entrance to the building. I'll quote the inscription in full, for it commemorates a Boer War fatality, the only Kintyre casualty of that war of which I am aware: 'In loving memory of William Gillespie, lance-corporal G Company, Argyll Rifle Volunteers, born at Drumlemble, 16th November 1874. He gallantly volunteered for active service in South Africa, and fell near Rustenburg on 1st October 1900. "Faithful unto Death"'.
The greatest rifle marksman that Kintyre produced (that we know about, anyway) must have been Private Alexander Ferguson of the 1st Argyll Rifle Volunteers, who, in July 1880 won, at Wimbledon, the National Rifle Association's most prestigious award, the annual Queen's Prize. He was then about 28 years old and in partnership with his father, Neil Ferguson, builder at Lagnagarach. Campbeltown. His triumph caused a great sensation in his home town and on his return he was accorded a tumultuous public reception. His awards included the sum of £250 - a veritable fortune at that time - and a gold badge worth £50. The Wimbledon coal-pit, sunk in 1881, west of Drumlemble, was named in honour of his achievement. This, remember, was in the heady days of Empire and before British military ardour was rudely extinguished in the wholesale slaughter of the Great War. There will be a good deal more about Alex Ferguson in the next issue.
Mrs Jeanette Brodie, Campheltown, has a photograph - c. 1900 - of three antiquated-looking guns pointing seaward, and six stylishly-dressed ladies and a gentleman posing on and around the barrels. The location is New Orleans, where the Argyllshire Artillery Volunteers had a battery. Just to the left of the photograph is the corner of a building, which stands to this day on the level foreshore beyond New Orleans Cottage. It is rectangular and windowless and I presume it to have been the company's magazine and store. The ring-net fishermen of old called that bit of shore 'The Guns', and I now know exactly why.
The only written reference I so far have to the New Orleans battery is in a brief Courier report of 19 September 1903: 'GUN PRACTICE AT NEW ORLEANS. Tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon the autumn practice of the local companies Artillery Volunteers take place at New Orleans Battery. The men parade at the hall at three o' clock'.
I wanted to take a look at the site for remains of the gun mountings, visible in the photo, so on 12 February my daughter Sarah and I cycled to the Sheepfanks and walked the shore. Sure enough, the ground is strewn with concrete lumps, a feature I'd hitherto failed to notice. These bits are all that remain of the foundations of the mountings. I hope to be able to provide some information on the guns themselves in the next issue.
Mr Leslie Colville in Machrihanish has an earlier photograph of the Kilkerran Battery, which was situated between Kilkerran Cottage and the burn, directly across the road from the old section of the graveyard. There are seven seaward-facing guns visible on the embankment above the shore, a couple of associated buildings, and a flagpole standing in the middle of the field between battery and road, presumably the Volunteers' parade ground. The date is certainly late nineteenth century.
Mrs Barbara Wilkie, Kilkerran, has two cannonballs found in the vicinity of the Battery by earlier members of the McMillan family, which farmed there, and to which she herself belongs. The guns themselves lay neglected in the grounds of Kilkerran Cottage until some thirty years ago, when they were removed for scrap.
One of the buildings connected with the Battery was demolished as recently as the early 1970s, when the bungalows at Kilkerran Glebe were erected. I have often regretted the demolition of that historic building, in and around which I played as a boy. Yet I cannot clearly visualise the structure now. It was squarish and very sturdily built in stone, certainly; there was a recess at ground level into which one could crawl, and one could climb on to an upper level. It is believed by some locals to have been built as an observation post, looking as it does out across the mouth of the loch, during the Napoleonic scares of the early nineteenth century. Others believe it to have been of later origin, contemporaneous with the establishment of the Battery. Does anyone have any information on the building and its function, or a reasonably detailed photograph? Its popular name was the Look Out, not to be confused with the grassy eminence of the same name above the Rocky Burn, which folk used to visit for the grand views it offered.
The Argyllshire Artillery Volunteers became, in 1908, the Argyll Mountain Battery, and as such served in Gallipoli in 1915, during that disastrously-led campaign against the Turks which culminated in the evacuation of the entire allied force. I remember old Hughie MacFarlane, one of my main informants in Tarbert when I was researching The Ring-Net Fishermen, telling me a little about his experiences there. I'm sorry now that I didn't pay more attention to what he told me, but my sole interest at that time was in fishing history. One little anecdote, however, has stuck in my mind. Two Tarbert men were in the mud and squalor of a trench together when a cuckoo cried out. One remarked on it to the other, who replied: 'Aye, I wish I was hearing it in the Geata Bhain.' The Geata Bhain - or White Gate - is at the heart of Tarbert, and that wistful remark encapsulates, for me, the misery of war.
Teddy Lafferty in Campbeltown had a similar little story which also came out of the trenches of the Great War, in France. Two Campbeltown soldiers together heard a flight of wild geese pass over the lines one night, then the remark: 'That's them gan tae the Black Loch. · Another Campbeltonian, of whose presence they had been unaware, was further along the trench. It wasn't, perhaps, an ornithologically sound observation, but it was a poignant one.
Here's food for the imagination. Gerry and Pat Nugent in Limecraigs House found a flintlock pistol concealed inside a wall of the eighteenth century building. The metal was rusted and much of the wood decayed, but the gun is otherwise in reasonable condition. An expert in Scottish weaponry has been contacted, and his findings will be noted in the next issue.
There are two Campbeltonians, that I know about, anyway, who fought in and survived the American Civil War, Amos Martin and Malcolm McMillan. The former is rather doubtful. He claimed to have been born in Campbeltown in March, 1798. I haven't been able, so far, to find any record of his birth or baptism, but that doesn't necessarily invalidate his claim: a good many individuals, I know from genealogical research, were not baptised. If indeed he was born in Campbeltown, he certainly was not baptised 'Amos'. I suspect 'Amos' to have been an Americanisation of 'Angus', but that cannot be proved either.
Whatever the facts of the matter, Amos was a very interesting old soldier. He emigrated to Canada with his parents, while still in his youth, and subsequently fought not only in the Civil War, on the Union side, but also in the war with Britain from 1812 to 1814 and in the Mexican War from 1846 to 1848. He was wounded only once, during the second battle of Bull Run, in August 1862, when he received 'a minic ball through the head'. He was on the losing side in that battle, which want to the Confederates, under General Robert E. Lee.
Martin was a member of 1st Company of the 100th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. He died in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, in 1908, at the reputed age of 110 years. No one there, it may be said, doubted his age: 'Men of 75 years who knew him all their lives remember him as an elderly man when they were boys' . He was a stone-cutter to trade and was 'rarely sick', though he had 'always smoked and enjoyed a little Old Scotch'. His Army pension amounted to 48 dollars monthly.
Our other Civil War veteran had a pension of two shillings a day from the US Government. About his origins there is no doubt. He was born on 19th December 1831 at Tangy, the son of Malcolm McMillan, farmer, and Kate McLarty. He emigrated to the United States as a young man and served throughout the Civil War (1861- 65) in the Union Army. He returned to Kintyre while still in his forties, was immediately nick-named 'The Yankee', worked as a labourer, never married, and died in 1903. In the penultimate year of his life, he was admitted to the Poor House, suffering from rheumatism. The Poor Roll entry remarks, of his Civil War pension: 'It is doing him more harm than good owing to his intemperance.' I'd give a lot to be transported back to turn-of- the-century Campbeltown with a chance of a few hours in 'the Yankee's' company.
No 37 Spring 1995
Page 2: Campbeltown Whalers
Page 3: Franciscan Converts in Kintyre - Part 1
Page 4: Mr. Macslimun - Clydeside Cameos
Page 6: The Cuckoo is a Bonnie bird // Roadside Flowers
Page 7: James Watt at Campbeltown - Part 1
Page 8: By Hill and Shore - Part 1
Page 9: The Screws