PRIVATE HUGH MCCREATH
ARMY CYCLIST CORPS
19TH APRIL 1917 AGE 23
BURIED: GAZA WAR CEMETERY, ISRAEL
Hugh McCreath used David's lament for Saul and Jonathan, who were killed in the battle at Mount Gilboa, for his son, Hugh, killed on the Mansura Ridge in the Second Battle of Gaza: "The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!" [2 Samuel 2:19]. The beauty of Israel refers to the flower of the race, and 'thy high places' doesn't mean high in terms of height but in terms of belonging to. Hugh McCreath used the definite article 'the', not the possessive 'thy' for high places.
The Second Battle of Gaza ended in a second defeat for the Egyptian Expeditionary Force just under a month after the first. Allied casualties were huge, greater than the authorities wanted to admit. Official figures were 509 killed, 4,359 wounded, 1,534 missing and 272 taken prisoners of war. However, 767 of the burials in Gaza War Cemetery relate to the dates 17-20 April 1917 and 767 of the names on the Jerusalem Memorial to the missing of the Egypt and Palestine campaigns.
Private Hugh McCreath was one of the nine children of Isabella and Hugh McCreath, a ships' carpenter from Partick in Lanarkshire. He and his younger brother, Gilbert, joined up together receiving adjacent army numbers. Both served with the Army Cyclist Corps in the 52nd Lowland Division, and both went with it to Gallipoli, arriving on 28 July 1915. After Gallipoli, the Corps went to Egypt and then to Palestine, arriving in time to take part in the first and second battles of Gaza. Gilbert survived the war.