Roll of Honour
2nd Lieutenant
George Ernest Main
Mentioned in Despatches
Student
George Ernest Main was a pupil at Glasgow Academy before he began what was to become a long and not always successful period as a student at the University of Glasgow. When he began his course in the Arts Faculty his matriculation details reveal that he was eighteen, a Glaswegian by birth and the son of an oil refiner, also George, who was deceased by then—he died suddenly in 1897 when George Jr. was just eight. The family- George, his older brother and their mother Jessie- lived at 2 Dalziel Drive, Pollockshields. He enrolled in the Ordinary class of Latin, though his last attempt to pass it, in 1913, ended, like all others, in disappointment. Maths proved just as troublesome the following year. He did, however, shine at Political Economy and passed well, along with Logic the same year. After a break the following year he returned in the session 1910-1911 to study Constitutional law and History, but again this was not his strong suit, though perhaps Political Economy was, as he passed the Higher degree exam in May 1912. In the next academic session George chose his future path and began his studies for the United Free Church ministry at what became Trinity College. He studied there for two years until 1914. Like many more Glasgow students the ups and downs of exams were about to fade into irrelevance and the war found in George a courageous soldier. He was gazetted temporary second lieutenant to the 9th King’s Own Scottish Borderers on the 18th December 1914, confirmed permanent on 10th October 1915.
Lieutenant Main served at Gallipoli, Egypt and the Western Front. In the autumn of 1917 he was in Flanders with his regiment, now attached to the 6th Battalion as Haig’s army prepared the attack and capture of the village of Passchendaele. The first moves in early October went well, but on the 12th October in what became known as the First Battle of Passchendaele, there were miscalculations of distance from the line and the weather was abysmal, churning up the ground and hampering the movement of troops and guns. George’s battalion were not involved in the attack that day but made a gruelling journey, breaking camp at 3a.m. and moving in torrential rain along slippery bridges and land that had become a quagmire to reach their designated position beyond the Stroombeck. There they were to be ready to support other units arriving from what was planned as a successful action. There was no success, no rendezvous. Captain Stair Gillon described how, though not involved directly in the attack, the 6th Battalion suffered 196 casualties that day, including 15 killed and 27 missing. Mostly the missing were drowned. Others were gassed or hit by bullets. He wrote of the scene that ‘it raises a picture of the Herculean labours of stretcher bearers, medical orderlies and their splendid officers, and the ministrations of chaplains in the rain, in the filth, and general hideousness. The following officers fell—Lieutenant G.E.Main.’
Born on the 16th March 1889, George Main died on the 12th October 1917. He was Mentioned in Despatches(MID) and his name was engraved on Tyne Cot memorial. He is remembered too on the Roll of Honour of the Glasgow Academy and the Pollockshields Book of Remembrance.
Comments and Citations
University of Glasgow Registry and Roll of Honour Records
Place of Commemoration: Commonwealth War Graves Commission � Debt of Honour Register