WW1 McKinnon Family Casualty Group, KOSB / Canadian Railway Troops (from Vancouver, B.C.)
Three: Private J. McKinnon, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, who was killed in action at Gallipoli on the first day of the Third Battle of Krithia on 4 June 1915
1914-15 Star (9692 Pte. J. Mc.Kinnon. K.O. Sco: Bord:); British War and Victory Medals (9692 Pte. J. Mc Kinnon. K.O. Sco. Bord.) Good very fine
Pair: Sapper P. McKinnon, Canadian Railway Troop
British War and Victory Medals (2500185 Spr. P. Mc Kinnon. C.R.T.) Good very fine
James McKinnon was born at Killearn near Stirling in 1878, and attested for the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers at Glasgow. He initially served in Egypt from 16 November 1914 before being transferred to the Gallipoli Peninsula with his battalion as part of the 29th Division. According to the Regimental website: ‘The Regiment’s time in Gallipoli was marred by challenging weather conditions which went from swelteringly hot to wet and freezing. The constant presence of flies, the diseases that came with them, the stench of putrefying corpses and maggots, and the increasingly ravaged surrounding landscape.’
McKinnon was killed in action on 4 June 1915. The son of Peter and Christina McKinnon of 431 Cassiar Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, he has no known grave and is commemorated on the Helles Memorial, Turkey.
Peter McKinnon, brother of the above, was born in Glasgow on 14 October 1891 and enlisted at Toronto for the Canadian Railway Troop on 1 April 1918, he was a Rancher living in Gillette, Wyoming USA at the time. Embarked at Halifax for London 9 May 1918, he joined the 6th C.R.T. in France on 13 July 1918 and witnessed the final months of the Great War engaged on railway construction duties. He returned home to his mother’s address per H.M.T. Royal George in March 1919, likely resuming his civilian occupation as a rancher in the USA.
