LANCE CORPORAL DOUGLAS GILRUTH HENDERSON
SCOTS GUARDS
1ST AUGUST 1917 AGE 19
BURIED: MENDINGHEM MILITARY CEMETERY, PROVEN, BELGIUM
There's a wonderful British recruiting poster with the heading, 'Your Country's Call'. It shows a kilted soldier pointing to a quintessentially English thatched cottage and asking, "Isn't this worth fighting for?" It's one of a number of posters that refer to 'the call', the call to arms - the call to enlist, to volunteer.
The phrase gave rise to a selection of memorial verses that appeared in the memorial columns of local newspapers. Douglas Henderson's mother could have been quoting from any one of them:
His country called - he answered
Old England to defend
Mid shot and shell, he never swerved
Faced duty to the end.
When death is near and all seems night
May we like him say, "It's all right".
Or another one:
Just when his life was brightest
Just when his hopes were best
His country called - he answered
In God's hands now he rests.
And then there's this one:
His country called, he answered, yes,
And sailed to meet the foe.
The phrase can also be found in enamel letters on a locket which were sometimes known as widows' lockets: the words surround an oval frame which opens to take the photograph of your loved one.
Although Douglas Henderson was killed in 1917, nineteenth months after the introduction of conscription, we know that he was a volunteer - that he answered the call - because there's a record showing he was wounded in 1915, before the introduction of conscription. He died on 1 August 1918, of wounds received the previous day when the 1st Battalion the Scots Guards were in the forefront of the attack on the opening day of Third Ypres. Their losses were expected to be heavy since, "the positions to be taken were known to be difficult of access and to be considered by the enemy to be almost impregnable". In the event the battalion lost 271 killed, wounded and missing between July 29th and 31st. Henderson died the next day.
