Private Robert Whitehead

Private Robert Whitehead, 7th ( Service ) Battalion, Kings Own Scottish Borderers. He was killed in action in France, aged 19, on 25th September 1915 on the first day of the Battle of Loos and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial, Dud Corner, Loos, France.  He had been born in Abbey St. Bathans, Berwickshire and was the son of Robert and Isabella Whitehead of Elmwood House, Greenlaw.  Before enlisting in September 1914 he had been employed as a bootmaker in Greenlaw. He fell in the attack on the Lens Road Redoubts where the Battalion suffered very heavy casualties and Piper Daniel Laidlaw won the Victoria Cross. Despite the gas he pulled up his gas hood and marched along the parapet amidst a storm of shot and shell playing “All the Blue Bonnets “on his pipes until the troops who were shaken by the gas blowing back into their trenches rallied and commenced their attack. The Objectives were captured but at the cost of 650 casualties in killed, wounded and missing. This was the first time the British Army had used gas in the War and it was not wholly successful due to changes in the wind direction. The first photograph show an attack at loos with the men disappearing into the ghostly cloud of gas and smoke and the second shows Piper Laidlaw in later years at an Armistice Day commemoration. The artist’s illustration shows Laidlaw winning his V.C..