Of the 20,598 names on the war memorial on the Loos battlefield, which commemorates soldiers with no known grave, a third are Scots. The 8th Battalion, Black Watch, in which 26-year-old Fergus served as a captain, lost 511 men the 9th Battalion lost 680. More than 8,000 British soldiers were killed on the first day of the battle alone, with the brunt borne by the Scottish regiments. The result was slaughter on an unprecedented scale, not helped by the fact that the Army deployed poison gas for the first time, some of which blew back towards the troops and settled in the trenches and craters that provided their only cover. The Battle of Loos, which Winston Churchill later called a tale of ‘sublime heroism utterly wasted’, was the first in which Lord Kitchener’s New Army of patriotic volunteers – rapidly trained and sent to France after answering the call of his famous recruitment poster – were pitched against the well-defended Germans.Īfter a four-day artillery barrage that proved to be largely ineffective because of a shortage of big guns and ammunition, a British force of 75,000 men, including about 30,000 Scottish troops, marched across open fields in full view of enemy guns. It is an astonishing story that, without his search, would have been lost to history. But after years of trawling his family’s archives and discovering long-lost letters, the true heroism of the Queen’s uncle has been unearthed by Fergus’s grandson James Voicey-Cecil. Such was the chaos and carnage of the battle that the precise details of the death of the Queen Mother’s beloved brother ‘Fergie’ have remained a mystery – until now. Yet for the best part of a century the Royals have not known his final resting place, or the full details of how he led an assault on the most heavily defended part of the German lines, had a leg blown off and was repeatedly hit by machine-gun bullets, before dying an hour later as his sergeant tried desperately to keep him alive until medical assistance arrived. And among the 20,000 soldiers who died during the largest First World War battle on the Western Front, there was one brave soldier in particular whose heroic sacrifice the Royal Family will never forget.įergus Bowes-Lyon, son of the 14th Earl of Strathmore, elder brother to the Queen Mother and the uncle Queen Elizabeth II never met, died 100 years ago today after leading his men into the face of the enemy. The Prince of Wales stood in solemn silence yesterday as he took part in a centenary memorial service in Dundee to honour the British troops who lost their lives at the ill-fated Battle of Loos. Heroic: Fergus Bowes-Lyon, son of the 14th Earl of Strathmore, elder brother to the Queen Mother and the uncle Queen Elizabeth II never met, died 100 years ago today
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