SECOND LIEUTENANT JOHN ANDERSON GIBSON CAIRNS
KING'S OWN SCOTTISH BORDERERS
29TH DECEMBER 1915 AGE 21
BURIED: PINK FARM CEMETERY, GALLIPOLI, TURKEY
Ten days before the withdrawal from Cape Helles, the British were busy reinforcing the barbed wire in front of their trenches, strengthening their defences as their numbers on the peninsular gradually diminished. Twenty-one-year old John Cairns was killed on the night of the 29 December whilst in charge of one of these wiring parties.
A law student in Edinburgh, John Cairns was already a member of the territorial battalion of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers when the war broke out. Volunteering for foreign service, he went with the regiment to Gallipoli and was killed just before the final evacuation.
The Reverend John Cairns, his father, was a Presbyterian Minister and Chaplain to the Forces. His mother, Helen Anderson Gibson Cairns died in 1894, the year John Cairns was born.