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Private James Douglas, DCM, MM
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Private James Douglas, D.C.M., M.M., R.A.S.C., 1878 -
1969, of Jedburgh, served with the Caucasus Military Agency during the 1st World War
and was held prisoner by the Russians til July 1919. Pte. Douglas was
presented with his D.C.M. and M.M., together with the Russian Medal for
Gallantry, at Berwick Barracks in 1921, before a parade of the Kings Own
Scottish Borderers.
James was awarded the Distinguished Conduct
Medal during World War I for conspicuous gallantry as a driver in the
Tartar Country. Under heavy fire James drove to the rescue of Allied
Counsels, who were trapped amidst fighting on the Kazbek Mountain.
James was born in 1878. He was mobilised to begin training with the
ASC in July 1916, and as he’d previously been a chauffeur, he was
assigned to mechanised transport as Private M2/194380. He became driver
to Captain George Marie Goldsmith, Army Intelligence.
In October
1916 James travelled with Captain Goldsmith to Basra and subsequently
Baku, where Goldsmith was to gather intelligence for Major General
Lionel C Dunsterville. The Major had been charged with assisting the
Tsarist Russian armies to prevent Baku falling into the hands of the
Turks. James and Goldsmith then proceeded to Tiflis to work with the
Caucasian Military Agency [Caucasus Military Agency]. When they arrived,
they became part of a team of 8 Specialist officers and three drivers.
The area was volatile and the Turks had begun the Armenian genocide.
The agency, working at Erzurum, were able to organise the running of 20
trains a day and managed to evacuate 4,000 Armenian women and children
to safety from Sarikamish to Erzurum. For this, and work with the
Armenian Army against the Turks, the agency staff were all awarded
Russian gallantry awards. James was awarded the Russian St Georges Medal
1st class for bravery in action. The agency then moved to Vladikavkaz.
The onset of the Russian revolution made the region still more
hazardous. The Allied Consuls attempted to flee to safety, but became
caught in heavy fighting on the Georgian Military Road at the Kazbek
Mountain. The American Consul Willoughby-Smith approached the agency for
help, and on the 12th May Captain Goldsmith and James, who was now
promoted to the rank of Corporal, left at 5am with an Ingush tribesman
as guide to rescue the Consuls. For his subsequent action James was
awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. His exploits were described in
the London Gazette as follows:
“For conspicuous gallantry in action
in the Tartar country, south of Erivan while with a Ford car he
proceeded to the rescue of the Allied Consuls who had been held up on
the top of the Kasbek Mountain. He came under heavy fire on the Georgian
Road and the guide accompanying him was killed”
Alastair Moffat
tells the story:
Presumably in retaliation for a lack of cooperation
and certainly as a form of dreadful cruelty, the Turks led out one of
the party each morning to be shot. Finaly, only Douglas was left.
Finding an unlocked door, he escaped and soon was lost in the trackless
wastes of the Caucauses plateau. Hungry and alone, Douglas wandered for
some days before a figure on horseback appeared and began galloping
towards him brandishing a sword. But instead of cutting down the Border
soldier, the Cossack stopped and, in English, asked him where he was
going. It turned out that the rider has returned from emigration to
Canada to join the Russian revolutionaary forces. The Cossack told the
astonished Douglas where he could jump a train heading westwards.
Eventually captured and imprisoned for a year in Moscow, he was
repatriated in a prisoner exchange for a Russion admiral. This was the
first news his wife had had in two and a half years.
Following the
Russian revolution, the Bolsheviks became suspicious of the agency and
arrested them in November 1917. They were marched over the Steppes in
winter and imprisoned in Moscow. After negotiation and in an exchange
for a Russian White Admiral all 11 agency staff were returned to Britain
via Finland in May 1919.
On his return home, he became chauffeur
for Sir Maxwell Scott at Abbotsford and a tour guide to Sir Walter
Scott's house til his retirement in 1958.
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Sources
Sources for this article include:
• Private James's grandson, David Douglas
• MacDonell, And Nothing Long, p.265. The Caucasus
Military Agency, on the other hand, had been transferred to
Vladikavkaz when the Turkish armies approached the Tiflis area.
There Colonel Pike was accidentally shot on 15 August while
watching the street battles between the Bolsheviks and the Terek
Cossacks. Goldsmith, who after the death of Pike became the
Acting Commanding Officer of the Caucasus Military Agency, and
the other members of the mission were arrested in Vladikavkaz by
the Bolsheviks in October for being connected to Lockhart
conspiracy. Lockhart was then under arrest in Moscow for
engineering a counter-revolutionary plot and was eventually
sentenced to death. (`Secret and Confidential Memorandum on the
Alleged "Allied Conspiracy" in Russia', 5 Nov. 1918; London,
PRO; FO 371/3348.) Members of the Caucasus Military Agency were
sent to Moscow in January 1919 and stayed in Butirski prison
until July 1919: Goldsmith's Report to the Director of Military
Intelligence, 1 July 1919; London, PRO; WO 95/4960.
Any contributions will be
gratefully accepted
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