Pte 57521 James Findlay Bruce

In 1901 the family is living at 44 Lilybank Road, Dundee. His father Peter is 44, a railway carter, his mother Janet is 45, David, 21, is a draper’s assistant, Helen, 19, is a jute weaver, and Robert 14, also works in a jute mill. Marjory, 10, James, 7, and Maggie, 5, are at school.

 

Unfortunately, the 1911 Scotland census is not available.

 

He enlisted in Dundee and was formerly 841, Highland Divisional Cyclist Company, the amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he served for nearly two and a half years, enlisting in about October 1915. He was posted to the 18th Battalion of The King’s Liverpool Regiment and later transferred to the 19th Battalion of the same regiment. He was serving in the 19^th Battalion as Private No 57521 when he was killed in action on the 30^th March 1918 aged 24 during the German Spring Offensive. Online family trees show his date of birth as 15th August 1893, which would make him 24 years old when he was killed. 

James was initially listed as Missing between 22nd-30th March 1918.

As Graham Maddocks points out in his book The Liverpool Pals, the CWGC records 38 men of the 19^th Bn of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as killed in action on 30^th March 1918 when as the Battalion diary below, shown in bold type, records that the men were actually out of the line and safely on the way to St Valery- sur- Somme.

The composite battalion moved off from ROUVREL at 8.30 am at 50 yards interval between companies, arriving at SALEUX at 3.20 pm where they entrained, detraining at ST. VALERY-SUR-SOMME the same night. The night was spent at ST. VALERY-SUR-SOMME.

Apart from those whose bodies were not found and are commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial all but two have burial sites at Savy British Cemetery, which itself is within a couple of miles of Roupy and contains most of the identified men killed on 22^nd March 1918. Therefore, it would appear that the date of death for these men shown as 30^th March 1918 is purely an arbitrary one and that they were in fact killed on 22^nd March.

James is commemorated in Savy British Cemetery, where a Special Kipling Memorial reads,

“To the Memory of these 68 British Soldiers who were killed in action in March 1918 and buried at the time in the German Cemetery on the St. Quentin - Roupy Road, whose graves are now lost.”

Savy was taken by the 32nd Division on the 1st April 1917, after hard fighting, and Savy Wood on the 2nd. On the 21st March 1918 Savy and Roupy were successfully defended by the 30th Division, but the line was withdrawn after nightfall. The village and the wood were retaken on the 17th September 1918 by the 34th French Division, fighting on the right of the British IX Corps.

Savy British Cemetery was made in 1919, and the graves from the battlefields and from the following small cemeteries in the neighbourhood were concentrated into it.

There are now over 850, 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, more than half are unidentified. Memorials are erected in the cemetery to 68 soldiers (chiefly of the 19th King's Liverpools and the 17th Manchesters), buried by the Germans in their cemetery on the St. Quentin-Roupy road, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.

The Cemetery covers an area of 2,555 square metres and is enclosed by a low rubble wall. 

His brother, Thomas Findlay Bruce, Police Constable, of 9 Avon Street, Hamilton, Scotland, made enquiries with the International Red Cross, but received a reply on 30th May stating they held no information on James.

 

An appeal for information was printed in the Liverpool Echo on 12th July 1918:

 “Reported missing, March 22, Private James F. Bruce, 57521, Signal Section, A Company, K.L.R. Information gladly received by Alex. McKiddie, 57 Crescent Lane, Dundee.”

 

Shockingly, eighteen months after James was declared Missing, the following notice appeared on 6th September 1919 in the Dundee People’s Journal:

“Previously reported missing 22nd-30th March, 1918, now officially presumed died on or since that date, Pte. 57521 James F. Bruce, 19th Batt., King’s Liverpool, aged 25 years, youngest and dearly beloved son of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Bruce, 48, Crescent Lane, Dundee.

 

His parents received his Army effects, including a War Gratuity of £13-10s, and were awarded a pension of 5/- a week.

His mother died in 1931 and his father in 1934.

 

Sadly, James has not been found on any memorials.