The Nicolson Institute

W. J. Gibson

In a war so great the share taken by the members of any one institution can be only as a grain of sand on the seashore. Yet the expression of loyal pride in local effort and achievement is not excluded, and has its use. It is therefore, with pleasure that T have agreed to the request of the Editor of the Lewis Roll of Honour to write a few words on the relation of the Nicolson Institute (which draws its pupils from all parts of the Island) to the great war.

For a number of years it had been the practice for a considerable proportion of the older boys, during their attendance at the Secondary School, to put in their training with the local body of Territorials— the Ross Mountain Battery. At the School Prize Giving of 1914, these boys attended in uniform to be ready to go off the same evening by the steamer en route for the annual training camp. Before the school re-opened, the Territorial Force was mobilised, and for some of these lads there intervened four long years of toil, of fighting, and of sickness overseas, before they saw their homes again.

Of the schoolboys still on the roll of the school at midsummer, 1914, thirty-six went on service with the Ross Battery, and later a number of other pupils who had not belonged to the Battery volunteered.
A census taken during the training at Bedford gave 103 as the total number of Old Nicolsonians then in the Battery.

These saw their first service overseas at Galiipoli, where as a unit of the 29th Division they took part in the first landing. The first British gun fired on the Peninsula was one of our mountain guns. While the gunners were doing fine work with the advanced infantry under the most severe conditions the drivers were engaged in the no less dangerous task of taking up food and ammunition to the firing line. All on the Peninsula in these days became habituated to living under fire. Even when bathing in the sea beneath the cliffs they were never out of gun range. For a portion of the Battery the no less rigorous days at Suvla followed. It was at Chocolate Hill that the "school gun" (as we regarded it) came under severe Turkish fire and two of the gun crew lost their lives.

Next followed the pleasant, though hard-working, interlude in Egypt. Then the two years in the Balkans brought their burden of tedium and sickness, finishing in the great rush over the mountains into Bulgaria. One of our old boys who had transferred from the Battery to the air service was the first observer to bring back to Headquarters the news of the Bulgar retreat. In the pursuit the Ross Mountain Battery was the first of the Allied artillery over the enemy's frontier. The hard drive over the hills with the guns unceasingly shelling the fleeing enemy, until the Armistice checked the pursuit, is for these men the last picture the War has left them of active service. Meanwhile another detachment of the Battery was in Palestine sharing in the toilsome scramble over the craggy uplands and across the wadies of Canaan. These helped to inflict the iinal defeat which at length set the Holy Land free from the Turk's paralysing ride.

On other fronts, in the same way, the old schoolboys bore their share. The accompanying photograph of a group of nine Nicolsonians who, in the first half of 1915, went out to France in the 4th Gordons, gives a glimpse of the nature of the work there, and of the cost of it to the School. Of the nine soldiers here shown two were killed in action, six were wounded, some of them several times over, and the remaining one was on medical grounds returned to home service.

Other regiments had their share of our recruits : a good many of our old boys saw the war through in the Seaforths, some in the Camerons, some in the Black Watch, and a number among the Canadians. No front has been without its quota—Flanders, Artois. Picardy, Champagne, Baku, Archangel, Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, North-West India. On all the seas of the world also they have been afloat—as deckhands in minesweepers, as AB's on scouts and patrol boats, as naval schoolmasters, as surgeons, as commisioned officers. In the mercantile marine, too, those on the bridge or in the engine room have their own stories to tell of perilous escapes from mine and submarine.

Nor have the girls failed to take a share. In Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and Women's Royal Naval Service, as nurses, as munition workers, they have shown the same spirit of steady purpose and cheerful endurance, and have contributed in their own way to the final defeat of the enemy.

A goodly number of the boys have received recognition for the meritorious nature of their services : one has been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, one the Distinguished Flying Cross, one the Cross of the Legion of Honour, five the Distinguished Conduct Medal, fifteen the Military Cross, three the Croix de Guerre, eleven the Military Medal, one the Meritorious Service Medal, one the Serbian Gold Medal, one the Greek Military Cross, one the Belgian Medaille Militaire, one the Order of St Stanislav, and several others have been mentioned in despatches.

The School mourns her many dead. Of those who have been killed in action, have died of wounds, or whose deaths have been a result of the hardships of war, we have counted a hundred and one. Our sympathy goes out to the relatives who have lost their dear ones. The grief felt by the School for those who have gone is leavened with pride when we remember their devotion to duty, their appreciation of the great issues, their spirit of self-forgetfulness and of steady courage. Their example will remain to inspire their successors in the school with something of their spirit of brave endeavour and their recognition of the high purpose for which life is given.

W. J. GIBSON.
The Nicolson Institute, Stornoway.