Second Lieutenant Walter Haddon

Second Lieutenant Walter Haddon, 7th ( Service ) Battalion, Kings Own Scottish Borderers. He died of wounds in the Quality Street, Casualty Clearing Station in France on 25th September 1915 on the first day of the Battle of Loos, aged 27. He was the son of Walter and Caroline Haddon of Colislinn, Hawick and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial, Dud Corner, Loos, France.  He had been a Territorial with the 9th Battalion, Royal Scots from 1909-1912 and had re-enlisted in August 1914. He fell in the attack on the Lens Road Redoubts where Piper Daniel Laidlaw of the same Regiment won his Victoria Cross. The attack was successful but casualties were very high. 12 Officers were killed. and the Regiment as a whole suffered 611 casualties out of 950 .On the outbreak of War he had re-joined his old Regiment, 9th Battalion, Royal Scots where he had served as a Territorial for three years. In November 1914 he was commissioned into 7th K.O.S.B. He was educated at Warriston School, Moffat and then Edinburgh Academy before attending Edinburgh University. Prior to enlisting he was serving an apprenticeship with Messrs. James Henderson, Hosiery manufacturers. The first photograph shows an actual attack during the Battle with the troops advancing into a ghostly cloud of gas and smoke. This day was the first time the British Army had used gas in the War. The artist’s illustration shows Laidlaw piping his comrades into the attack amidst a storm of shot and shell. The second photo shows Piper Laidlaw during a commemoration at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day.

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