Leith's Darkest Dawn video

The Scotsman

GRETNA 110, The Royal Scots Regimental community outreach exhibition that commemorates the 110th anniversary of Britain’s worst rail disaster at Quintinshill, near Gretna, on 22 May 1915.  The exhibition, staged at the 1st/7th (Leith) Battalion’s Drill Hall in 1915, raises awareness of the 227 people killed in the crash, including the 216 Royal Scots officers and soldiers from the Battalion, who were on the first leg of their journey to fight at Gallipoli.  The terrible disaster left an indelible scar on the close-knit Leith and Musselburgh communities, with several families losing both fathers and sons. Many of the dead were taken to a temporary mortuary that had been established in the Drill Hall before the majority were buried in the nearby Rosebank Cemetery, Pilrig Street.      The GRETNA 110 exhibition includes:   ·      A short documentary film, 'Leith's Darkest Dawn', about the Crash and the aftermath   ·      An accurate model of Larbert Station in 1915, from where the train departed  ·      Displays:  o   Moving illustrated stories from some of the local soldiers involved and their families  o   The important role played by the people of Gretna and Carlise after the Crash  o   Leith Academy’s GRETNA 110 researched creative exhibits   o   Trench warfare training for men from Leith, Musselburgh and West Lothian  o   Temporary morgue at the Drill Hall following the Gretna Crash  o   Funeral procession to Rosebank Cemetery  ·      Dedicated Research Room to explore family ancestors

Transcript

00:00On the morning of May 22nd, 1915, tragedy struck the heart of Britain's railways.

00:10In what would become the worst rail disaster in the nation's history, over 200 lives were lost.

00:16Most of them were young soldiers, Royal Scots of the 1 7th Battalion, bound for war.

00:22Recruited from the streets of Leith in Edinburgh, they were on their way to the front lines of

00:26Gallipoli, ready to serve. But they would never reach the battlefield.

00:33Their journey ended in disaster, in a moment that would leave an indelible scar on a generation.

00:42It was a very local battalion. It drew its officers and its soldiers from Leith, Portobello and Musselburgh.

01:03They were very much a family affair. Many fathers and sons, and many had been in the battalion for 10,

01:1312, 15 years by the time the war came. They were very close.

01:21My father served in the Royal Scots. He joined the 7th Battalion in 1913.

01:27And when the war broke out, he and all the other 7th officers volunteered for overseas service.

01:35They went to Larbert and at 8.30 pm on the 19th of May, they heard that the order to entrain had been

01:46cancelled. This was because the troop ship had gone aground in Amersi. And if that had not had happened,

01:54the 7th would have travelled on another day and no doubt have reached Liverpool quite safely.

02:02Technically you had to be 17 to join. A number undoubtedly slipped through saying I'm 17,

02:09when I think some were probably as low as 15. They had been waiting since August 1914,

02:16and now at last they were going to war.

02:23Just before the train

02:26left, my father was asked by Christian Salverson in the next compartment, whether he would like to

02:34join them and make up a fall for bridge. My father wasn't that keen on bridge and he said,

02:39no thank you, I'll just stay with my friends, Willie Cormack and TG Clark, where I am.

02:45At 6.49 am, the troop train carrying nearly 500 soldiers of the 1 7th Royal Scots hurtled south

02:55along the west coast main line. The men, fresh from Leith, were bound for war, unaware that disaster

03:01lay ahead. Just north of Gretna Green, the track should have been clear. Instead, a stationary local

03:08train sat directly in their path. There was no warning, no time to stop. The impact was devastating.

03:21Wooden carriages shattered, sending soldiers flying through the wreckage. Within seconds,

03:26the scene became a tangle of splintered wood, twisted metal and broken bodies.

03:30Then, another horror. A northbound express, unable to stop in time, slammed into the wreckage.

03:48Oil lamps and gas fittings ignited. The tangled mass of trains erupted into an inferno. Flames consumed

03:55the shattered carriages and those trapped inside had no way out. In just moments, the calm of the

04:02Scottish countryside was replaced with chaos, fire and unimaginable loss.

04:09The worst railway disaster in British history had unfolded in an instant.

04:12When the crash came, my father was thrown down onto the floor of the compartment and made a shower of

04:35water and glass. He must have recovered fairly quickly because he and Willie Kermack managed to

04:42take TG Clark, who had been badly injured, out of the compartment before it was enveloped in flames.

04:52In the next compartment, all the bridge players were killed.

04:58Later that morning, there was a sad roll call and only five out of my father's platoon of 45 answered their names.

05:08The commanding officer paraded the survivors and there were 55 soldiers and seven officers, 62 out of the

05:22498 who'd set out from Larboard, who were uninjured or not dead.

05:28Thank you, Corporal Crichton. Stand to tease.

05:29We arrived just on the border and I looked out and I said, oh, a lovely morning.

05:36And then the next thing was the crash. I landed on my face, with a pile of stuff on my back,

05:46was hemmed to the ground, couldn't move. But where my face was, there was a hole. I could see the

05:53lake and I smelt fresh air. Then the next thing was, there was a second crash. And it made the hole bigger,

06:01but I made a tent and I got out. I got on my feet and I walked along the line.

06:05And it was blazing and the soldiers was trapped. They couldn't get away. They were

06:12caught in the fire. Then my leg gave way and I collapsed.

06:17How did it feel like waking up to know that over 220 of your comrades had died in that crash?

06:24Oh, of course, you see, the point is this. You had no thought for anything like that,

06:30you know what I mean? You were just a matter of wondering if you were going to be right yourself.

06:39The funeral procession stretched through the streets of Leith for three hours.

06:47Making its way from the Drill Hall on Dalmany Street to the solemn grounds of Rosebank Cemetery.

06:56There wasn't the family untouched by the disaster. And it had always been there in the Leith memory.

07:06The battalion was almost all raised from the Leith area. So with over 200 soldiers killed by the train

07:21crash, it must have had a devastating effect on such a close-knit community.

07:26As a parent, you would accept your child going to war as a soldier. But to have a death occur

07:38through a train crash must have been a really quite challenging thing to have to come to terms with.

07:44After he had recovered from his injuries, he went to Gallipoli, where, still only 21,

07:57he was made a company commander in action. He then led his troops in a good half-dozen

08:04hard-fought battles in Gallipoli, Egypt, Palestine, and the Western Front. He was wounded twice and awarded

08:16the military cross. Three weeks after he was demobilized, he wrote my mother a letter including

08:24this passage. Is anyone really happy? I come to wish oftener and oftener that I had been killed sometime

08:34during these four years. The happy young man of pre-war days was now subject to recurrent depressions

08:43which would go on for the whole of the rest of his life. My father tells the story of they were playing

08:51cricket in the late 1930s and a ball hit his hand and some glass came out and he said this must be

08:58from the train crash. So I think things like the physical impact and the mental impact of the depression

09:05meant that it's something that he carried with him, the burden of that terrible crash throughout his

09:10whole life. Fifty years after the crash, my father lay dying in a nursing home in Edinburgh,

09:19semi-conscious and drugged with morphine. The nurse who looked after him on the night he died told my

09:29mother that he had talked and talked of a train crash. Nowhere did we lose 216 soldiers within

09:42a hundred miles of their home having never got to the war they had so valiantly set out to take part in

09:52their home. And that is something which we will always remember.

10:04allows us to find out to help out their parents that we are studying.

10:16I'll see you next week.

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