Roll of Honour

Lieutenant

Andrew Ralph Lawrie

Student

Andrew Ralph Lawrie was born on the 19th January 1897 at 221 Great Western Road, Glasgow, Lanarkshire. He was the eldest son of Andrew Lawrie, a Justice of the Peace (JP) and Agent of the St George's Cross branch of the National Bank, and his mother, Wilhelmina Lawrie (née Brown), who had married on the 16th July 1894, also in Glasgow. The family home was at Dungoyne, Kirkintilloch. Andrew went up to the University of Glasgow in the autumn of 1913 to study Medicine. He was sixteen. Four years later, on the 22nd August, instead of anticipating Finals and a career in Medicine ahead of him, he, like too many of his fellow students, had died on the Western Front.

Image of Andrew Ralph Lawrie

Andrew matriculated to study Chemistry and Zoology in his first year, and Anatomy the following session. In the spring of 1916, however, he volunteered for active service and received a commission as 2nd Lieutenant with the 9th Bn. Scottish Rifles. He left for the Front in France on the 22nd August. In December of that year he was transferred to the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps and was promoted to Lieutenant. In May 1917 he was slightly wounded in the face, but healed quickly and returned to duties.

Andrew was in command of one of the tanks of 'D' Battalion of the First Tank Brigade when they engaged with the enemy just east of Saint Julien, north east of Ypres. This was the Third Battle of Ypres as the Allies pushed towards the final capture of Passchendaele. But success was months away. On the 22nd August the troops and tanks were under heavy fire and ploughing through the mud, many of the tanks mired down in it. Lieutenant Andrew Ralph Lawrie was killed in action on this day, aged 20.

Lieutenant Andrew Ralph Lawrie is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial in Passchendaele-Zonnebeke, near Ypres (Ieper), Belgium.

Comments and Citations

University of Glasgow Chapel, Registry and Roll of Honour records.

Biography: Service information contributed by Jan Van der Fraenen, The Passchendaele Archives of the Memorial Museum Passc