1355 Pte Alexander Buist
B Company, 7th Bn Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
b. 24 Oct 1892
d. 24th May 1915 aged 22
Husband of Jessie Ferguson, Dock Street Carronshore
Youngest son of Thomas and Maggie Buist, Carron House, Carronshore
Alexander Buist married Jessie Ferguson in 1913. The marriage certificate identifies Alexander as an engine fitter. Jessie is shown as “a spinster”.
The couple went on to have a child, Alexander Ferrier (Ferrier was a family name) Buist, born 1st August 1915, 4 months after his father died on 24th May, 1915 in the action involving 7th Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders at St Julien, Ypres.
In a letter to Alexander’s wife, Colour-Sergeant Harley wrote that Alex “was severely wounded with shell fire and died in the dressing station in the village of St Jean. George Ferguson (his brother-in-law) is down the line suffering from the effects of gas”.
Alexander Buist had served his apprenticeship in the engineering shop of Carron Company but was working as an engineer with G & J Weir of Cathcart, Glasgow when war broke out. He a promising engineer who had been carving out a career for himself and his family
He had been in the Territorials for almost four years prior to the war and joined up straight away after the outbreak of war. He went to France on 15 December 1914.
Alexander was killed in action during the German offensive beginning on 24 May 1915, known as the Battle of Bellewaarde Ridge. On the previous day, his battalion had been ordered to take over the frontline trenches at Wieltje.
At 2.45 a.m. the next morning, the German artillery began a fierce bombardment. “Simultaneously, a yellowish-greenish vapour issued at intervals of 30 yards from the German trenches.” This chlorine gas attack stretched over almost five miles of the front and was to last for four-and-a-half hours.
The cloud of gas rose to a height of 40 feet above the ground. Lieutenant A D Morrison, an eyewitness, wrote: “It bleached the sandbags, it withered the grass, it corroded the buttons on the men’s tunics, and jammed the mechanism of their rifles.”
The men had been given respirators during the previous week. These were pads of cotton waste in bags of mosquito netting. They were to be dampened in a soda solution and then tied over their mouths and nostrils. According to Lieutenant Morrison they “inspired little confidence.”
The battalion war diary recorded that about 200 men had to leave the trenches suffering from the effects of gas. Many were slow to put on their respirators because the German trenches were close to theirs and because the German infantry attacked swiftly after the gas.
The battalion’s trenches were subsequently heavily shelled for the whole of the day. The German infantry made some gains on either side of the centre front which held its ground “but no sensational results were achieved”, according to the Official History. This was the end of the German attempt to capture Ypres in 1915. By then the British Army was in a bad way. Its artillery was nearly out of shells but above all, every unit in the Ypres area needed a large draft to get back to its proper fighting strength. One historian concludes: “It is fortunate that the enemy did not know how bad things were.” When the 7th Battalion of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders was relieved from the front line trenches on the night of 24th May, its casualties for that day were 6 men killed, 20 wounded and 19 gassed. In a letter to Alex Buist’s wife, Colour-Sergeant Harley wrote that Alex “was severely wounded with shell fire and died in the dressing station in the village of St Jean, George Ferguson (his brother-in-law) is down the line suffering from the effects of gas. As yet I don’t know whether he was away before your husband was brought down or not.”
Source: RUSSELL MACGILLIVARY
The documents posted below identify the place and date where Alexander Buist died, and which are recorded in the documentation for the White House Cemetery, St Julien/St Juliaan. Alexander’s body was found on the battlefield and recorded by the Imperial (subsequently Commonwealth) Graves Registration Commission. Alexander was found alongside a comrade John McDonald whoworked at Carron Works and lived in West Carron Village.
Alexander Buist had worked at Carron, and was found alongside John McDonald on the St Julian battlefield. It is very likely that the two men will have known each other.
Note comments made on burial return in White House Cemetery
Carron Works looking East with West Carron village bottom left.
The War Graves Commission allow three lines of text by relatives to commemorate the fallen service man or service woman. It appears that the bodies of Alexander Buist and John McDonald were found at some time after the battle. The original registration does not identify date of death, but the bodies of John and Alexander were subsequently identified and exhumed. They men are buried together in the White House Cemetery, St Julien.
The CWGC oversaw, and continues to oversee, the design and construction of the war graves of servicemen and women world-wide although the policy has changed in a world that fortunately does not see the same numbers of servicemen dying in conflict. The principle that each of the fallen has equal status, regardless of rank, remains.
Alexander’s son, also Alexander Ferrier Buist, was born on 15th August 1915 in Dock Street, Carronshore. The birth certificate identifies Alexander as the son of Private Alexander Buist “who died on 24th May 1915”, 3 months before the birth of his son.