Roll of Honour

Roll of Honour

Guthrie, Alexander

Rank: Lieutenant

Regiment: 1st Highland Brigade, Royal Field Artillery

Biography: Son of Rev. W. G. Guthrie, Glass, Aberdeenshire ; born at Corse Schoolhouse, Leochel-Cushnie, 8 October 1893 ; educated at Ellon H.G. School and Gordon's College ; matriculated 1913 ; student in Arts, 1913-5. He enlisted at the close of his second winter session, March 1915, and received a commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st Highland Brigade R.F.A., in May of the same year. After nine months' training in this country he proceeded to France and took part in the defensive fighting on the Ypres and Arras Fronts during the summer of 1916. He was slightly wounded at the Battle of the Somme and was invalided home for a few months. He returned to France in the end of the year, followed up the German retreat from the Somme, fought at the capture of Messines ridge in the spring of 1917, and was killed at Nieuport in Belgium on 12 July 1917, while trying to save a comrade who had been entombed by the explosion of a German shell. He was promoted Lieutenant a few days before his death and was mentioned in dispatches of 7 November 1917 for distinguished and gallant conduct. Possessed of a fund of real common sense and a staunchness on which his friends could and did place infinite reliance, Guthrie's influence was great and always for the highest. If he had been permitted to carry out his intention of proceeding to the ministry, some parish would have had the inestimable benefit of a minister whose advice and assistance could, as a friend has said, "put confidence into the waverer, and restraint upon the impetuous".

Date of Death: 12 July 1917

Burial Details: Buried at Ramscapelle Road Military Cemetery, St. Georges, Special Memorial.

Publication: Roll of Service, edited by Mabel Desborough Allardyce. Published 1921.


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