Lance Corporal Andrew Fortune

Lance Corporal Andrew Fortune, 2nd Battalion, Kings Own Scottish Borderers. He was killed in action in Belgium on 4th October 1917, aged 21, during the Battle of Third Ypres ( Passchendaele) and is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, Flanders, Belgium.  He had been born in Ancrum and was the son of James and Margaret Fortune of Fairnington, Roxburgh. He fell in the attack on Polderhoek Chateau which resulted in heavy casualties and limited success. The Battalion casualties were 11 Officers and 438 Other Ranks. (In this action Captain Machin of Coldstream won the Military Cross ). Before enlisting in November 1914 he had been employed alongside his father as a ploughman at Fairnington Farm.  ( His nephew and namesake Corporal Andrew Fortune also of the 2nd Battalion was killed in action in Normandy in 1944, see above ).The photographs show the desolation of the Flanders battlefields where the incessant shelling had destroyed the fragile drainage systems.