#20540 Lance Corporal David Trons Blacklaw
5TH CAMERON HIGHLANDERS
THE ADVANCE ON THE BUTTE de Warlencourt went forward on 18th October. On the previous night, the 5th Cameron Highlanders had lined up along taped markers, among their ranks a 25-year-old mill worker from Lochee, Dundee, who had enlisted in the summer of 1915. David Blacklaw waited to advance while officers took compass bearings to make sure they did not veer off in the wrong direction among the maze of shell holes and trenches on the featureless landscape.
Lance Corporal David Blacklaw. (Authors’ collection)
At 3:40am David and his comrades attacked in the dark as rain hammered down. Officers and men stumbled and fell in the slippery ooze, rifles and Lewis guns became clogged with it so that bomb and bayonet were soon the only weapons. Smoke had been discharged to try to obscure the battlefield and reduce the fire from the direction of the Butte and Warlencourt line. The Scotsmen kept close to the barrage and stormed the German trenches as soon as it lifted. Capturing the front line with slight casualties, David’s battalion began throwing up blocks to stop the enemy from bombing their way towards them, but within fifteen minutes they had done just that on the Highlanders’ right flank, driving out the Wiltshire men next to them and getting a foothold back in the trench. On their left, the Scotsmen had no idea what was occurring with the South African troops at the end of their line.
The Cameron Highlanders surged forward in a counter-attack, frantically flinging bombs and driving the Germans back 200 yards. This put an end to enemy resistance in that direction. By 9:30am, David’s battalion had linked up with the South Africans. They had progressed forwards, but there was no chance of claiming the Butte. The day passed quietly with the exception of a threatened counter-attack, which came at about 2pm. Some 300 Germans grouped together as if they were about to charge. David’s battalion at once sent up an SOS ‘and the men in field grey, peppered with bullets and shellfire broke up in disorder and scrambled for shelter’.
David Blacklaw fell in attempting to seize the enemy trench. Just before he was hit he had singlehandedly captured an enemy machine gun. The 25 year old left behind a widow, Maggie, and a 4-year-old son, David Jr. Maggie placed the following memorial in the local newspaper on behalf of her little boy:
I’ll always pray for you dear daddy,
For your country you nobly fell;
Although of you I cannot remember,
My mother can always tell.
David Blacklaw was buried on the battlefield where he fell. His body, if subsequently recovered, was never identified and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Pier & Face 15b.