Private John Cowe

Private John Cowe, 7th ( Service ) Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders. He was killed action in France on 2nd May 1917 during the Battle of Arras, aged 24.  He was born in Hutton on 18th February 1893, the eldest son of John Downie and Janet Cowe of Fishwick, Paxton and Kames West Mains, Leitholm and is commemorated on the Arras Memorial, Arras, France. Before enlisting in Berwick-upon-Tweed in October 1914 he had worked as a ploughman. He had already seen action in the Battles of Loos, where he was wounded and the Somme before losing his life whilst he was acting as a Battalion stretcher bearer just south of the village of Gavrelle. The photograph show Allied troops during the Battle with a patrol of Seaforths checking a captured dugout.