When Kingoldrum-born Douglas Annand Fenton finished his degree at St Andrews and raced to take up a commission in the 2nd Cameronians, his Dad James, the schoolmaster at Marykirk, Kincardineshire, his Mum Lavinia and his brothers Hilton, Robbie, Ernest and their little sister Adelaide were enormously proud of him.
Douglas was in the fight from March 1915 and came through 1st July 1916 with his Battalion in the attack on Ovillers.
But like so many young, keen junior officers, his luck wouldn’t hold.
When on 10th September he was killed in action holding the line near Vermelles as the Battle of the Somme ground on, his Colonel wrote to his parents: “he was a most promising officer and totally fearless. If there was one man here we hoped and expected always to have with us, it was Fenton.”
I should think his family felt similarly.
They chose the loveliest inscription for his headstone:
“A Dear Lad,
Long Loved
And Lost Awhile.”