Private James Fairgrieve

Private James Fairgrieve, 7th ( Service ) Battalion, Kings Own Scottish Borderers. He was killed in action in France, aged 46, on the 25th September 1915 on the first day of the Battle of Loos. He had been born in Selkirk in 1868 as James Hope and was the son of the late Margaret Hope and he is buried in Mazinherbe Communal Cemetery, France. He had a tailors business in Forest Road, Selkirk when he enlisted in 1914 and went to France with his Battalion in July 1915. ( At 46 years he was quite old for a volunteer ). He fell in the attack on the Lens Road Redoubts near Loos. Gas had been used for the first time by the British Army that day and some had blown back into the K.O.S.B. trenches unsettling the men. Piper Laidlaw jumped up on the parapet amidst a storm of shot and shell and piped the men into the attack playing ” Blue Bonnets O’er the Border”. Greatly inspired the Borderers rallied and dashed across no man’s land to take their objective. Laidlaw was awarded the Victoria Cross for his astonishing heroism. Casualties , however, were very heavy with over 600 out of the 950 attackers. Laidlaw himself suffered two wounds. The photograph shows an actual assault during the Battle with the troops disappearing into a ghostly cloud of gas and smoke. The third photo shows Piper Laidlaw in later years at the cenotaph on Armistice Day. The artist’s illustration shows Laidlaw winning his V.C.