James Gurney Age 38
Regimental No. 11958 Private 1st Battalion, Scots Guards
1st Guards Brigade, 1st Division
Killed in Action 11 April 1915
Buried Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery, Souchez, France
Personal Background
Only son of James Gurney, stonemason, and Agnes(nee Swanston) of St. Boswells, James was a great grandson of John Younger, the St. Boswells poet, essayist and shoemaker. James had three sisters, Barbara, Jane and Janet. Their mother died in 1884 when he was only 7 years old. James started his working life as a tailor's apprentice, but clearly abandoned that and went to work as a porter on the railways. He was unmarried and was a porter for four or five years at Lauder Station. After serving his apprenticeship in the village he was employed in Edinburgh and latterly at Ormiston, from where he enlisted in the Scots Guards at the outbreak of the war and by October 1914 he was at Caterham Camp, Surrey. In February 1915 he left for the front from Wellington Barracks, London and sadly survived only two months.
Military Background
On 7 April, the 1st Battalion Scots Guards were in the trenches near Richebourg Saint Vaast, and the Battalion snipers claimed 15 Germans killed in four days. On 8 and 9 April, the Battalion was still in the trenches. On the afternoon of 10 April the support trenches were shelled. On 11 April, the day Private Gurney died, there was much less sniping and that evening the Battalion was relieved by the Cameron Highlanders. Casualties whilst in the trenches had been 9 other ranks killed and 28 wounded.
How Private Gurney died is not known, though it seems probably that either German snipers or German shells were responsible. A comrade sent word to his father that James had been killed in action and was "missed very much, as he was one of the best." On 26 April the death was confirmed by the War Office. James' father died in 1922.
