Private James Turner

Private James Turner. 7th ( Service ) Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders.  He was killed in action in France, aged 35, on 12th October 1916 during the Battle of the Somme and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Thiepval, France. He had been a regular soldier having enlisted in 1900 and served six years in India and two years in Egypt. He returned home to Billiemains, Chirnside and took a job with the Post Office first as a Telephone linesman then as a postman. Under the Derby scheme he re-enlisted in June 1915. He was born at Mairmont Rig, Reston and later married a Marion Dewar of “Rosebank”, Chirnside. He was a keen church goer and acted as a Sunday School  teacher. He was the first married man in Chirnside to die in the War. The photographs show Scottish troops on the Somme. The colour photo shows the peaceful Somme landscape today with ” no guns , no barbed wire, no guns firing now”