Seaforth Highlanders
Resided at 22 Kerse Lane, Falkirk. Prior to enlisting he was employed as a moulder in one of Falkirk’s iron foundries.
He was taken prisoner in April 1918. He described being robbed of his possessions and rations and then being ordered to carry the German wounded to the rear. He was held in a confined space within a building with 460 other men without food or water ‘with our fellows nearly lying on top of one another’. They were forced into labouring behind the German lines before being sent to Lille and then to work in a coal mine were his rations consisted of a piece of bread in the morning and a thin soup in the evening. He had a fight with a German civilian foreman who he ‘dropped to the ground’ and for that he was placed on bread and water for fourteen days.
He was then transferred to Friedrichsfeld about thirty miles north of Dusseldorf were he contracted dysentery as a result of the poor diet and conditions and the German doctors ‘did nothing at all for me or for any of the men here. They said we were fit, no matter what was wrong with us.’ Although he was sent to a hospital when his temperature reached 103. He also stated that the German NCO’s struck prisoners and kicked them and he frequently saw fellow prisoners being struck with rifle butts. If he had not received food parcels from home he would not have survived.