Trip to learn about Buchan
Stirling Members’ Centre of the National Trust for Scotland visited Peebles to view the museum devoted to the life and work of the novelist John Buchan.
Although best known for ‘The 39 Steps,’ the Perth-born writer penned about 100 works of fiction and nonfiction.
He also had a career as a politician and statesman culminating in his appointment as Governor General of Canada and simultaneous elevation to the peerage as Lord Tweedsmuir.
The members’ trip happened at a time when the 100th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Arras, one of the bloodiest of World War One, occurred.
It is a battle closely connected to the Buchan Family.
For Britain and the Empire this battle achieved the most territorial gain since 1914 but bad weather slowed the advance and when an associated French push failed, the battle ended in stalemate.
Of some 159,000 British and Empire fallen, missing and wounded nearly one third, that is 46,000, were from Scottish Battalions. Within that number 18,000 fell or were missing in action.
Second Lieutenant Alastair Buchan, John Buchan’s younger brother, led his platoon from the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers over the top on the first morning.
He was hit almost immediately and died later that day in a Field Hospital.
Winston Churchill, his commanding officer, who was then out of politics, wrote one of many letters of condolence.
Churchill described Alastair as “a most charming and gallant young officer...conscientious and much loved by his comrades”.
Movingly, the nurse who ministered to Alastair in his final moments kissed him before he was interred.
She later wrote to Anna Buchan, his sister, saying that she did this in the absence of his mother.
For the Buchan Family, and John Buchan in particular, Alastair’s death was immediately compounded.
On the same day, also in the morning, and, about half a mile away, Tommy Nelson, his great friend, fellow student from Oxford and business partner in an Edinburgh publishing house, was hit by a shell and died instantaneously.
Two days later Rev Robbie Macmillan was killed.
Robbie, serving as a padre and a close friend of the Buchan Family, was romantically linked with Anna Buchan.