Private John Jeffrey

Private John Jeffrey, 8th ( Service ) Battalion, Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.  He was killed in action in France, aged 20, on the 1st October 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. He had been born in Edrom and was the son of William and the late Margaret Jeffrey of Crossrigg, Hutton and Haddon, Kelso and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Thiepval, France. Before enlisting in March 1916 he had been employed as a farm servant at Fairnieside, Ayton. He had originally enlisted in the Kings Own Scottish Borderers but had been transferred to the K.O.Y.L.I. The autumn rains soon turned the churned up the battlefields into a glutinous quagmire in which men and guns could only move with difficulty as can be seen from the photographs. The colour image shows a peaceful Somme landscape today with ” no gas , no barbed wire, and no guns firing now”.