Pte 57397 John Brown

• Age: 20
• From: Carluke, Lanark
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 20th Btn
• D.O.W Saturday 30th June 1917
• Commemorated at: Railway Dugout B.g. Zillebeke
  Panel Ref: Sp.Mem.F13

John Brown was born in Carluke, Lanarkshire, in 1897-8 the on of James and Nellie Brown. His father was born in Ireland and his mother in Biggar, Lanarkshire. 

John had a younger brother Robert, born in Glasgow in about 1900.

In 1901 his parents, with two children, are living at 33 Ingram Street, Blackfriars, Glasgow.  His father is 28, employed as a shoemaker in the fire brigade, his mother is 24, John is 3 and Robert 1. It is likely that other children were born but unfortunately the 1911 Scotland census is not accessible so no further family details are known.

Unfortunately, John’s service record has not survived, so the details of his military service are not known.  We do know that he enlisted in Glasgow in the Lowland Divisional Cyclist Company, as Private 1149, and at some point was transferred to the  20^th (Pals) Battalion of The King’s (Liverpool) Regiment  and served as Private 57397. The amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he enlisted in the second half of 1915.

In June 1917 the battalion was in the Ypres salient, and the Battalion War Diary shows the action taking place when John was wounded:

June 27^th  - Battalion marched to trenches in English Wood to relieve 2^nd Bn Yorkshire Reg. Casualties 2 OR wounded. 

28^th - Moved forward to relieve 2^nd Bn Wiltshire Reg.  Relief completed by 3 am.  Casualties 3 OR wounded. Infantry track heavily shelled by Boche 10pm-midnight.

29^th – About 8 pm Boche fired a number of 4.2’s and light T.M’s into our wire. At 11 p.m. enemy commenced heavy barrage on front line, support line, and communication trenches, preparatory, apparently, to launching a raid on our trenches. D Company (in front line) sent up S.O.S. signal, which was immediately passed on to artillery, who retaliated heavily on enemy’s lines about two minutes after warning.  Enemy fire slackened about 11.50 pm; no Boche attacked our trenches.  Casualties totalled 1 OR killed and 9 OR wounded.

John died of his wounds on 30^th June 1917 aged 20 or 21. 

He now rests at Railway Dugout Burial Ground, Zillebeke, Belgium.

The commune of Zillebeke contains many Commonwealth cemeteries as the front line trenches ran through it during the greater part of the First World War.

Railway Dugouts Cemetery is 2 Kms west of Zillebeke village, where the railway runs on an embankment overlooking a small farmstead, which was known to the troops as Transport Farm. The site of the cemetery was screened by slightly rising ground to the east, and burials began there in April 1915. They continued until the Armistice, especially in 1916 and 1917, when Advanced Dressing Stations were placed in the dugouts and the farm. They were made in small groups, without any definite arrangement and in the summer of 1917 a considerable number were obliterated by shell fire before they could be marked. The names "Railway Dugouts" and "Transport Farm" were both used for the cemetery.

At the time of the Armistice, more than 1,700 graves in the cemetery were known and marked. Other graves were then brought in from the battlefields and small cemeteries in the vicinity, and a number of the known graves destroyed by artillery fire were specially commemorated. The latter were mainly in the present Plots IV and VII.

The cemetery now contains 2,459 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War. 430 of the burials are unidentified and 261 casualties are represented by special memorials. Other special memorials record the names of 72 casualties buried in Valley Cottages and Transport Farm Annexe Cemeteries whose graves were destroyed in later fighting.

VALLEY COTTAGES CEMETERY, ZILLEBEKE, was among a group of cottages on "Observatory Road", which runs Eastward from Zillebeke village. It contained the graves of 111 soldiers from the United Kingdom and Canada. It was in an exposed position during the greater part of the war.

TRANSPORT FARM ANNEXE was about 100 metres South-East of the Railway Dugouts Cemetery, on the road to Verbrandenmolen. The graves in it were removed to Perth Cemetery (China Wall), Zillebeke, but one officer, whose grave could not found, is specially commemorated here.

The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

John's grave was one of those destroyed and as such as the inscription on his headstone reads:

“THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT”

This phrase was decided upon by Rudyard Kipling and is used when the burial place of a soldier is not known. It is a biblical reference from Ecclesiasticus 44:13 which reads in full as: "Their seed shall remain forever, and their glory shall not be blotted out". 

Soldiers’ Effects shows mother Nellie,  including a War Gratuity of £8. The family address on the pension card is given as 32 Clyde Street, Partick, Glasgow.

John is commemorated on the Glasgow Roll of Honour.

We currently have no further information on John Brown, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.