Bro. Sir Iain Colquhoun of Luss

During WW1 Sir Iain Colquhoun of Luss was an officer in the 1st Battalion Scots Guards serving on the Western Front. He had a distinguished career being both wounded and awarded a Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and bar and mentioned in despatches for bravery. He was also, uniquely amongst the men from this area, court martialled for a very unusual offence –“Conduct to the prejudice of good order of military discipline in that on 25th Dec he Approved of a truce with the enemy Permitted a cessation of hostilities.”

He had participated in what was effectively a Christmas Day truce in December 1915 so that the Germans could collect and bury their dead. To-day that would be deemed a humane and correct thing to do but not by General Lord Cavan in 1915, who commanded the Division in which the Scots Guards were serving, and who was actually regarded as one of the better British generals of World War One, although one might think that there wasn’t a lot of competition for that title.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 which has passed into legend, and of which a first-hand account was given in the Lennox Herald of 23rd January 1915 by one of its participants Bonhill man, Sergeant William McAusland, 1st Battalion Royal Scottish Fusiliers, when he was home wounded less than a month after the truce, had given the British generals a severe fright. No matter that both sides had quickly resumed killing each other with hitherto unseen ferocity after the truce, and that 1915 was as bloody as any other year in France and Belgium, the High Command was concerned that such truces undermined the men ’s will to fight and had disciplined many of the soldiers who had participated in the 1914 truce. They had also issued strict orders that there was to be no repetition of the truce at Christmas 1915. To try to ensure that the order was obeyed they ordered the artillery and the machine gunners to fire off salvoes every few hours over the Christmas Period including throughout Christmas Eve and Day.

Sir Iain’s Diary, of which this is a transcript, explains why he, a Captain and Company Commander, believed that he was not ignoring that order, although a few of his superiors thought otherwise, and what happened to him and to his immediate superior Captain Miles Barne (sometimes spelt Barnes in the diary), in temporary charge of 1st Scots

Guards, who was also court martialled. There has been an assumption since 1916 that

Sir Iain was treated leniently because of who he was (apart from anything else his wife was the niece of the Prime

Minister, Herbert Asquith) and that may be so, but it should be remembered that virtually every British officer of the time came from the upper classes and many were of similar social standing to Sir

Iain, with exactly the same public school and landed gentry backgrounds: their set of values would have been the same as Sir Iain’ s. So the officers who sat in judgement of him were his social peers and some at least would have had similar experiences of trench warfare, all of which would have made them more sympathetic to Sir Iain.

As well as having the Prime Minister’s niece as his wife, he had Asquith’s son Raymond as his Prisoner’s Friend - which is what defence counsel are known as in military discipline. Raymond Asquith was a fellow front line officer – he was killed during an attack in the Battle of the Somme later in 1916 -and one of the finest minds of his generation.

Asquith was unimpressed by the military hierarchy generally, in particular their tactical incompetence, but chose to serve at the front

and had a high regard for his fellow trench officers and soldiers. Sir Iain’s detached approach to the court martial, his belief that he had done the right thing and stood by it no matter what some of his superiors thought, impressed Asquith –it was very much in line with Asquith’s thinking, as he later recorded.

Asquith’s efforts did not get Sir Iain acquitted but they ensured that his sentence was the minimum possible. Sir Iain was found guilty but only received a Reprimand. General Haig, who had been Commander-in-Chief BEF only since 10th December 1915, and whose duty it was to confirm or reject the punishment, was smart enough to see all the pitfalls of the sentence.

He personally rejected even a reprimand sentence and Colquhoun was immediately returned to full duties. He went on to a have a distinguished army career, and became Lord Lieutenant of Dunbartonshire soon after the war. To-day we would applaud his actions and condemn the foolishness of Lord Cavan for bringing the charges in the first place.

Sir Iain died on the 12th November 1948 in Luss, He is buried in Luss Cemetery.

Sir Iain Colquhoun DKL No.18 Master 19241926, Affiliate of Partick Saint Mary’s Lodge No.117 in 1925 and Grand Master Mason of Scotland 1935-1936.

Sir Iain Colquhoun of Luss and Colquhoun nominated The Duke of York as the next Grand Master Mason at the Quarterly Communication of Grand Lodge held on 6 August 1936, and it was he who installed the Duke on 30 November 1936. Following his accession to the throne a mere eleven days after his Installation, it was not until 8 March 1937 that the King wrote a letter of resignation from Buckingham Palace, addressed to Sir Iain Colquhoun at his London address, so in theory he remained Grand Master Mason of Scotland for 88 days after becoming George VI.