PRIVATE DONALD MCCALLUM
BLACK WATCH
13TH NOVEMBER 1916 AGE 19
BURIED: HUNTER'S CEMETERY, BEAUMONT-HAMEL, FRANCE
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
Psalm 46: 1-3
Despite this devastating blow to their lives, James and Emma McCallum can still affirm their unshakeable faith in God - "their refuge and strength" - on their son's headstone.
At the time of the 1911 census, James McCallum was head forester at Canford Magna, Lord Wimborne's estate in Dorset. Ten years earlier he had been a forester on the Dundas estate in Dunira, Perthshire. Donald was working up here as a forester before he joined up in February 1915. He was 17. Sent to France In August 1916 he was killed in action three months later in the capture of Beaumont-Hamel.
Beaumont-Hamel had been one of the objectives of the 1 July but had proved to be so heavily fortified that it was virtually impregnable. Eventually, on 13 November, the 51st Division and the 63rd Royal Naval Division, launched a much postponed attack across ground made almost impossible by three weeks of heavy rain. However, with the benefit of surprise and the help of thick fog, by the end of the day they had achieved their objective.
McCallum and thirty-two other members of the 6th Battalion the Black Watch, all killed on 13 November, were buried in Hunter's Cemetery. This tiny cemetery, with a total of only forty-one burials, was called Hunter's Cemetery after the Revd Hunter, Chaplain to the 6th Battalion, who with the Revd Gordon spent "the days following the fight, searching the battlefield under continuous shell fire, and so well did they carry out this work that every missing man of the Battalion was accounted for". [History of the Black Watch in the Great War Vol. 2 p.152 Wauchope]
Donald McCallum is commemorated in both Canford Magna and Comrie, where two of Sir George Dundas's sons are also commemorated.