A Pulteneytown Man

Kantara War Memorial Cemetery
There are 1,562 members of the Commonwealth forces, from WW1, buried in Kantara War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt. Amongst that number is, Pulteneytown born, William Couper.
William Couper was three months short of his 25th birthday, when he joined the Cameron Highlanders, in September 1914. He was a hosier to trade and was working and lodging in Edinburgh when he enlisted.
Not for William, the cold, wet, miserable trenches of the Western Front. He was destined to form part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force who travelled to Mudros, a small port on the Greek Island of Lemnos, in November of 1915. Mudros lay fifty miles from Gallipoli and because of its strategic position became the base for a major Allied camp and hospital.
William was to remain on Lemnos for seven months, earning a promotion to corporal, before being posted to Alexandria, Egypt. Shortly after his arrival William contracted pleurisy and it would be two months before he would be fit enough to join his new battalion, 1/4th Bn, Royal Scots, as part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.
Palestine
On the 31st October 1917,in what is now known as the Third Battle of Gaza, as part of a diversionary tactic to fool the Turkish Army into believing that a full frontal attack on Gaza was imminent, 40,000 troops  and heavy artillery bombarded the garrison. The overall plan was the capture of Jerusalem, but first the Allied Forces must capture the water supply at Beersheba. The two previous battles for Gaza had failed, partly due, to the shortage of water. The intention was to draw the Turkish Forces away from the lightly defended Beersheba, into a defence of Gaza (where the previous battles had been centred). This proved to be successful, when an Australian Light Horse unit breached the Turkish defences and secured the town’s wells.
However, on the 2ndNovember, in the continuation of this attack, William suffered gunshot wounds to his shoulder and back and from which he was to suffer paralysis.
Mr and Mrs Couper received a telegram, at the family home of 42 Huddart Street, Pulteneytown, Wick, on the 4th November informing them that their son was dangerously wounded but that they would not be granted passage to travel to him. Permission was occasionally granted for the next of kin to make a hospital visit (if granted, usually to hospitals just over the Channel), to grant permission to travel to Egypt would have been highly unlikely.
At 3.15pm on the 6th November 1917 at the 24th Stationary Hospital, Kantara, Egypt, William Couper lost his life.
28607 Corporal William Couper, 1/4th Battalion, Royal Scots, is buried at grave no. 138, Kantara War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt.
William Couper was survived by his parents: William (A stills man, in the local Pulteney distillery) and Mary (nee Bain) Couper, elder brothers, George B and James C, and his younger sister, Williamina Catherine. His elder brother, James, was enlisted into the 2nd Scots Guard, this Battalion saw action in, amongst others, the First Battle of Ypres (1914), The Battle of Neuve Chapelle (March 1915), The Battle of Loos (Oct 1915), The Battle of Albert (part of the Battle of the Somme, 1916), and The Second Battle of Passchendaele (part of the Third Battle of Ypres, 1917)
William Couper was one of the, estimated, 5.5 million Allied deaths during the Great War and it is to whom we owe a debt of honour.

Lest We Forget