First World War Victory Medal – Private John Ferguson, 7th Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers – KIA Loos 1915
Victory Medal – 14069 PTE. J. FERGUSON. K. O. SCO. BORD.
Private John Ferguson was born at Paisley, Renfrewshire, and enlisted at Paisley into the 7th Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, receiving the regimental number 14069. He was the son of Mrs Ferguson, of 53 Springbank Road, Paisley.
The 7th (Service) Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers formed part of 46 Brigade, 15th (Scottish) Division, one of Kitchener’s Second New Army divisions raised in September 1914. The Division landed in France on 9 July 1915, and Private Ferguson would have crossed to the Western Front with the battalion during this period.
The 15th (Scottish) Division quickly earned a formidable reputation. Its first major action came at the Battle of Loos, beginning on 25 September 1915, an attack remembered at the time as “The Big Push”. This was a large-scale offensive involving six British divisions and marked the first use of poison gas by the British Army.
On the morning of 25 September 1915, the 7th K.O.S.B. were in forward trenches preparing to assault Hill 70 when German shelling intensified and drifting chlorine gas began to envelop their positions. Men began coughing and choking as the gas took effect.
It was during this attack that Piper Daniel Laidlaw performed the action for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross. Ordered to “Pipe them together”, Laidlaw climbed onto the parapet under heavy shell and machine-gun fire and played “Blue Bonnets” and “The Standard on the Braes o’ Mar” to steady and inspire the men of the battalion. With bayonets fixed, the Borderers advanced from the gas-filled trenches towards the German lines. Laidlaw continued piping despite being severely wounded in both legs.
Private John Ferguson was killed in action that same day, 25 September 1915, during the assault at Loos. He was 21 years of age.
He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial, Panels 53 to 56, which records the names of over 20,000 officers and men who fell in the Loos sector and whose bodies were never recovered.
A young Paisley man who landed in France in July 1915 and fell in his battalion’s first great battle only two months later, John Ferguson died in one of the defining Scottish divisional actions of the Great War.
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