There is a mystery in the nominal roll for 1905. Dugald Macpherson’s age is written as 49, crossed out and changed to 46. Was this a clerical error or a slip of the pen? Or did someone deliberately make the sergeant-major three years younger than he was?
Army Book 220 listed every soldier by rank, name, age and the training he had attended. It was the annual record of the Easdale Volunteers. We have earlier nominal rolls and they all prove that Macpherson would have reached his 49th birthday in 1905. There is also a heavy, leather-bound Muster Roll which records his enlistment in 1874 at the age of seventeen. All the dates fit. So why did someone change his age in 1905?
Dugald Macpherson appears again in a tattered military document dating to 1908. This is surprising because he should have retired two years earlier. Volunteers could not serve beyond their fiftieth birthday. Regulations forbade it and there were no exceptions. But in 1908 the nation’s defences were restructured and a new Territorial Force replaced the old Volunteers. At Easdale, a new company of 8th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was formed. The first entry in H Company’s nominal roll is none other than Sergeant-Major Macpherson, his age conveniently shown as 49. Was this the reason for the earlier anomaly? Was he needed as the first sergeant-major of this new Territorial company, but he had to be under the age of fifty?
Perhaps, in 1905, Captain Gillies had seen a crisis looming. There might have been no one suitable to replace Macpherson as company sergeant-major, if he had to retire aged fifty in 1906. Patrick Gillies, commander of the Easdale Volunteers, would also become the first commander of the new Territorial company in 1908. He would need an experienced sergeant-major whom he could trust.
Captain J Mackenzie was the adjutant at the headquarters on the Isle of Bute. He had to check the nominal rolls for all twelve companies of Argyll’s Volunteer Artillery. Was he aware, in 1905, of the impending crisis at Easdale? Did he fail to notice the anomaly over Macpherson’s age? Or could it have been the adjutant’s idea to make the alteration, a pragmatic solution to inflexible bureaucracy? Perhaps he had tried to convince the War Office to extend Macpherson’s service, but was told that they were too busy planning the new Territorial Force to be bothered with old Volunteers. Was it the adjutant’s pen that changed the entry in the nominal roll?
Above – Macpherson’s entry in the 1905 nominal roll. The alteration slopes to the left, whereas the original entry slopes to the right.
Top photo – front cover of AB220, the nominal roll.