Captain John Kelsall

Captain John Lindsay Kelsall, M.I.D.,”B” Battery, 86th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. He was Gazetted 2nd Lieutenant in the  Army Service Corps on 28th August 1914 and transferred to Royal Field Artillery in the rank of Captain on 7th February, 1917. He was killed in action, aged 26, on 28th August 1917  in Flanders during the Third Battle of Ypres. He had been mentioned in dispatches. He is buried in the Huts Cemetery, Ypres, Belgium and the epitaph on his gravestone reads “Died at the guns heartening his men at Zillebeke Lake”  He was a native of Crieff, Perthshire and was the son of Henry and Mary Kelsall (nee Dallas) of  Bothendene House, Bowden and Moss Side Estate, Rochdale, Lancashire. He had been educated in Crief and Marlborough College , Wiltshire and at the Imperial College of Science in London where he was a member of the O.T.C. In August 1914 he was commissioned  and subsequently promoted captain in the Army Service Corps in July 1915.After going to France he was transferred in to the R.F.A. in June 1917. The photograph shows an 18 pounder gun in action. This was the usual piece used by the R.F.A. and was usually used in an anti infantry role using both high explosive and shrapnel shells one of which is pictured below.