William applied for a commission in the army in December 1914. He had been 
eighteen in September. He was appointed as a Second Lieutenant to the 11th 
Battalion The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles). He spent most of January 1915 
training in Stirling. He graduated third out of twenty nine fellow officers 
and at the beginning of February went down to the Bristol area to join the 
11thBattalion. He spent the next nine months training at Sutton Venny. He 
turned nineteen in September and on the 3rd of October he crossed to France 
to join the 9th Battalion which had suffered serious losses during the Battle 
of Loos. His telegram to his parents, sent from Folkestone, reads ‘Crossing  
tonight. Cheer oh’.

The 9th Battalion, part of the 28th Brigade of the 9th(Scottish) Division, 
was based at this time at Dikkebus and went into the Front line in Armagh 
Wood to the south east of Ypres. William did not keep up his diary writing 
during this period so all we have to connect him with this time is a letter 
he wrote to his father in November when he talks about though does not name 
the Cloth Hall in ruins which he had seen on his way up to the front. In 
December he fell ill with an abscess in his mouth which was serious enough to 
have him hospitalised for two weeks at Etaples.

When he rejoined his battalion he found he had been transferred to the newly 
created Machine Gun Corps. He spent the whole of January 1916 retraining and 
recorded in his diary that there was plenty of time for pleasure. He rejoined 
the 9th Division as an officer in the 28th Machine Corps Company. He also 
knew by this time that his second star had been agreed by Division but the 
War Office seems to have taken its time to ratify his promotion to 
Lieutenant. The 9th Division was now based at Le Bizet between Plugsteert and 
Armentieres and William’s battalion went into the Front line at the village 
of Le Touquet which straddles the Belgian- French border. 

From his diary we find out that his unit spent six days in the trenches and 
then six days out usually staying at a farm called Grand Rabeque which was 
still within range of the German guns. Most of his work in this area was 
concerned with improving the emplacements for the machine guns. Apart from 
this his main concerns were that of any soldiers – letters and parcels from 
home. In particular, he looked forward to letters from Jane (Jean) Kelso whom 
he had fallen in love with though he still wrote letters to his old 
girlfriend Margaret and she to him. Jean was also a pupil at William’s old 
school and she had been Dux of the school in 1914. It is not known when they 
first got to know each other – presumably when William was on leave from 
training during 1915. It is claimed by William’s family that they became 
engaged on William’s last leave home when Jean was still several days short 
of her sixteenth birthday. William records in his diary somewhat 
enigmatically ‘Our Happy Day’ two days before his return to France.
Throughout March and April William records his constant back and forth to the 
trenches, the regular afternoon strafe, the artillery bombardments and trench 
mortar fire which he particularly hates. Every week too there is a mention of 
a fellow officer or member of his unit  being wounded or killed. He seems, 
however, to hate the bad weather almost as much as the enemy guns. But if he 
was becoming increasingly fatalistic about his future this not conveyed in 
the diary but may well have been sensed in his many letters at this time 
which sadly no longer exist. His last entry in his diary is for the 22 April 
‘Relief to Trenches.’ 

From an account given later to his father he was wounded in the abdomen by 
machine gun fire when he was supervising his machine guns going into their 
emplacements on the night of 22/23 April. He was removed to Casualty Clearing 
station No 2 in Bailleul where he was operated on. But he died at 3.05pm on 
the 24April having lost consciousness only 30 minutes before. He must have 
been aware that he was going to die. He was buried next day in Bailleul 
Communal Cemetery. He was nineteen and a half year old.