Great Uncle Jim.

My Great Uncle Jim died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme 1st July 1916 and is remembered here on the family gravestone, although he is buried in France, in Blighty Valley Cemetery, Authuille Wood. Of the 493 soldiers buried there most died on that horrific first day of battle.

The huge scale of the First World War was a major challenge for the relatively small British Army. At the start of the war, Lord Horatio Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, avoided introducing conscription by inviting men to volunteer with their friends, family and colleagues. Kitcheners New Army of volunteer battalions became popularly known as the Pals Battalions.

Great Uncle Jim was a surveyor and he joined the Pals Batallion, 17th HLI, the Highland Light Infantry (City of Glasgow Regiment). The Highland Light Infantry in the 32nd Division mainly comprised of units of the new army created by Kitchener. In Glasgow, these volunteer battalions were also known as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Glasgow. This was in reference to the fact that they were the three battalions of the HLI raised in Glasgow in 1914 by the Corporation of Glasgow and the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce as part of Field Marshall Kitchener's volunteer recruitment drive.

The 17th were the 'Glasgow Commercials'. Their original name was the 'Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion'. Most of their original recruits were students of the Royal Glasgow Technical College, former pupils of local schools (including the High School and Glasgow Academy) and white collar workers from the business houses and different trades of Glasgow and the surrounding area.

I was born many years after Great Uncle Jim died but remember how my elderly aunt who was a small girl at the time, told of watching him, her favourite uncle, march through our town with his battalion, on the way to their training camp in Gailes. He didn't come back.