Douglas Macclesfield Anderson

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

John Watson Macclesfield Anderson was a retired Colonel who had served with the Indian Army and from 1863 served with the East India Company and Bombay Staff Corps as Deputy Superintendent in the Revenue Survey Office at Mysore, moving in 1881 to become Superintendent of the Sindh Settlement Survey. On his retirement from the India Office he returned to England with an Indian born bride-to-be, Edith Melville Gordon, and the couple married in Kingsclere, Hampshire at the start of 1888. By 1891 they were living in Kelso, Roxburghshire and had three daughters, Edith Violet, Mary and Margaret. Ten years later the family had moved to live at Ewart Thirlings, Wooler, Northumberland and the three girls had been joined by Douglas, born on 24th June 1892, Lillian and John.

From 1905 to 1908 Douglas was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire where he was a member of the Officer Training Corps. Then on 8th April 1910 he arrived in Canada, having sailed from Liverpool on the SS Virginian, and according to the ship’s manifest he had no occupation and was intending to be a fruit farmer in Kelowna, British Columbia. Three years later Douglas was joined by his younger brother John when he had finished his education at Wellington College and the two of them ran a fruit farm at Sunset Ranch.

Having mobilised with the 102nd Rocky Mountain Rangers in August 1914 a month later Douglas was at the new camp at Valcartier enlisting with 7th (1st British Columbia) Regiment, where he became Private 16967 with HQ Company. At the end of September, he sailed with the Battalion aboard the SS Virginia from Quebec City to Devonport, and a posting to West Down South Camp on Salisbury Plain, then moving on to Lark Hill Camp in December.

Mid February 1915 saw the 7th Battalion as part of the 2nd Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division sail from Avonmouth to St.Nazaire, France, where they were assigned to the East Lancashire and Hampshire Regiments for instruction in trench duties near Ploegsteert in Flanders. The Battalion’s first taste of actual warfare was at St. Julien, part of the second battle of Ypres, where chlorine gas was used for the first time by the Germans, and it was here on 24th April 1915 that Private Anderson, who was acting as a signaller, was reported missing in action. A report in his old school magazine said “he was last seen standing among our wounded, whom he refused to leave, as the Prussians swept down upon them”.

Douglas Macclesfield Anderson is remembered in Doddington on D13.01 and D13.05 and is also remembered on Wellington College War Memorial, and the war memorial at Morebattle, Roxburghshire.

In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance, and the Kelowna War Memorial, British Columbia.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Anderson