A small archive relating to his education, military service, and career.

Bookseller Notes

John McDonald was born in Lochfoot, Dumfries in 1890; he attended Dumfries Academy and then Glasgow University, where he graduated as M.A. The present archive includes a record of his education at various stages, from schooldays through to university, and a folder of certificates and testimonials related to his teacher training, up to and after the War, which provided an interruption to his steady progress.He served with the Army Service Corps during the Great War, fighting in the Salonika campaign and attaining the rank of Sergeant. The long letter to his sister here is written from Struma Valley, Macedonia on pages from his Army notebook, and recounts 'uncensored' the events of the last five months, including his unforgettable 'first glimpse of war': 'the enemy guns were pouring out shells, and the noise rolled like thunder among the hills [...] There was a short truce to bury the dead and gather in the wounded'; flashes of energetic bombardment and fire, and rumours of 'a big push'; horse-riding on dangerous terrain, his exposure to shell-fire, including 'one moment' where he was 'prepared to leave this world [...] but I did not get as much as a souvenir' of the shell-shrapnel; the local landscape and weather ('now we are having beautiful sunny days like a Scotch summer'); a civilian casualty; the threat of malaria, fever and dysentery injury possible but illness inevitable, the 'skeletons of men and animals killed in the last Balkan war [...] still lying bleaching in the sun' making it 'no wonder that this country is full of disease'. Overall, the experience is considered a formative one: 'My life here has been better guided for me than I could have planned it myself, and out of the past I get confidence for the future, but should the final sacrifice be required, I shall not shrink from it'. Following the war he was appointed Headmaster at Kirkmichael School, before taking on the same role at Tarbolton his obituary records his interests as gardening and bee-keeping, both of which he employed in the educational setting dear to him.