Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Douglas Rennie, who was known as Jack, was born late in 1888 in Morley, West Yorkshire. He was the youngest of the eight surviving children of William Milne Rennie and Rachel Cumming, originally from
Aberdeenshire in Scotland. He had five brothers and two sisters. His parents moved to the Bradford area around 1880 when William purchased a worsted spinning mill. When he died in 1900 at the early age of 44, William was a wealthy man whose effects were worth in excess of £40,000 (more than £2 million today). William’s two elder sons, William Edward and James Alexander Rennie continued the business, and employed their next three younger brothers, Herbert, Hamilton and Cecil (1901 Census).
Jack was still a schoolboy at this time, and he attended Bradford Grammar School for three years on the Modern side of the school, starting in 1901. His French and German were weak in his final year; his most successful subjects were Physics, Art, History, Chemistry and Maths. It has not been possible to trace what Jack did after he left school at fifteen. It would have been natural to follow his brothers into the family firm. However, at the time of the 1911 Census his mother lived alone in a substantial house in Undercliffe, and his brothers and sisters had married and left home. There is no record of where Jack was living or what his
occupation was.
Jack enlisted in the Army in Bradford, giving his place of birth as Aberdeen, so he was perhaps keen to serve in a Scottish regiment. This is unlikely to have been before 1915. He was initially posted to the Territorial 4th Battalion Cameron Highlanders, which had gone to the Western Front in February 1915. Jack joined them after the start of 1916, and they were disbanded in March of that year. At some point he was transferred to the 5th battalion of the
same regiment. During the Somme fighting they were heavily engaged as part of 9th Scottish Division in the struggle for Delville Wood in July and August. After a period of recuperation and rebuilding, in October the 9th Division was given the task of taking the Butte de Warlencourt, a fifty-feet high mound of chalk which dominated the slopes around it. At 3.40am on 18th October the 5th Camerons advanced on Snag Trench in a heavy deluge which turned the ground into a soft ooze. Despite a feeble smoke screen and the weakness of the barrage, they succeeded in taking and holding their objective, losing
67 dead. Rennie was one of them, although at first he was reported as missing. An officer who was in the trench a few days later described it as full of mud and water with bodies sticking out all along where they had been hastily buried. Proper burial was only possible months later following the German retreat from the Somme area in 1917. By then it was
impossible to identify his body, if it was even found, and his name is listed among the missing on the Thiepval Memorial. In April it was officially pronounced that his death was accepted on or since 18th October.'