William Neve Monteith, BA

• Matriculated: 1897

• Born: 22 August 1878

• Died: 25 September 1915

• Regiment: Rifle Brigade

• Grave/Memorial: Ploegstreet Memorial: Panel 10

Family background

b. 22 August 1878 at The Manse, Glencairn, Moniaive, Dumfriesshire, as the second son of Reverend John Monteith (1837–1886) and Ellen Maria Monteith (née Neve) (1845–1912) (m. 1874).

Parents and antecedents

Monteith’s father was the Minister of the Parish of Glencairn for his entire working life. His father, also John Monteith (b. 1805), was a procurator in the Sheriff’s court in Glasgow. Monteith’s father died from injuries received when his wagonette was in a collision and he was thrown out. Although his wife was not injured his coachman was severely hurt. James McCall, the other driver, was charged with culpable homicide but was found not guilty by a majority verdict. He was however fined £5 for being guilty of reckless driving. John Monteith was “an ardent advocate of temperance”. Monteith’s mother was the daughter of William Tanner Neve (1814–99) a wealthy solicitor of Cranbrook, Kent.

Siblings and their families

Brother of:

(1) John Cassels (later Major (Temporary) Lieutenant-Colonel) Monteith (1875–1915); mentioned in dispatches (London Gazette, no. 29,422, 31 December 1915, p. 38); killed in action 1 October 1915 near Hulluch while serving with the 2nd Battalion, the Bedfordshire Regiment. He married (1914) Jane Robertson Wilson (1893–1970), the daughter of Sir John Wilson, 1st Baronet Wilson of Airdrie (1843–1918); one son; her later name was May, after she married (1932) General Sir Reginald Seaburne May, KCB, KBE, CMG, DSO (1879–1958).

(2) Ellen Maud (c.1877–1948);

(3) Muriel Cassels (1880–1964); later Paul after her marriage (1906) to John William Balfour Paul (1873–1957); three children;

(4) Hugh Glencairn (later Colonel, DSO, OBE) (1885–1963); married (1915) Dorothy Huntley Dunell (1889–1953); one son, who was killed in action 23 March 1945 in the Reichswald, Germany, while serving with the Grenadier Guards; one daughter, who became the first wife of the Hon. Max Aitken (1910–85), the son of Lord Beaverbrook (1879–1964) (marriage dissolved in 1944), and then married (1946) the journalist and biographer Benjamin Welles (1916–2002), the elder son of the American statesman Sumner Welles (1892–1961).

John Cassels was a pre-war Regular in the 1st Battalion, the Bedfordshire Regiment, which was stationed in Multan (now Pakistan), and became the Battalion’s Adjutant in 1906; in 1908, en route from India to Britain, the Battalion was posted to Aden. He subsequently became a Staff Captain at Colchester and Adjutant of the Officers’ Training Corps at Glasgow University. He stayed there until the outbreak of war, when he asked to rejoin his Regiment, then stationed at Mullingar, Ireland. He commanded ‘D’ Company at Mons and Le Cateau and in October 1914 he took part in the Battle of La Bassée (12–22 October). Almost immediately afterwards the Battalion was sent northwards, to Ypres, where it was in position by 7 November, when the Germans broke through on its left flank. Captains Monteith and Macready organized a successful counter-attack but were wounded and evacuated home. In January 1915, now recovered from his wounds, John Cassels was sent as Adjutant to the Officers’ Training School at Cambridge, and here he stayed until he was fit enough to return to France in early August 1915 and join the 2nd Battalion of his Regiment. On 25 September 1915, the first day of the Battle of Loos, the Battalion’s Commanding Officer was wounded and John Cassels took command, leading it towards Hulluch in its efforts to gain ground. But the Battalion’s main task soon became the holding of a trench called Stone Alley and while John Cassels was superintending the work of blocking, he was killed in action.

Ellen Maud worked in the Voluntary Aid Detachment Hospital at Drumlanrig and with the Young Men’s Christian Association in France.

Muriel Cassels married a Ceylon tea-planter.

Hugh Glencairn was a Scottish rugby international.

Wife and child

Monteith married Muriel May Cox (1890–1971) (m. 1915), the daughter of Benjamin Connell Cox (1854–1924), a woollen manufacturer of Largo, Fife. Benjamin Cox was a County Councillor and served on the Military Tribunal during the war.

William Neve and Muriel May’s son was also William Neve Monteith (1915–2004). He studied at Magdalen 1934–37, gaining a 4th in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1937. He was initially in the colonial service, becoming Clerk Assistant to the Parliament of Sudan. He later changed to the Foreign Service and was at one time Counsellor in Helsinki. He served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War and was a prisoner of war in Italy (1941–43); after his release he joined Training Command. After leaving the Foreign Service he went to St Andrew’s University, taking his BD in 1967, and was ordained a Minister in the Church of Scotland the same year. He finally retired to Elie to live in the family home.

Education and professional life

From 1889 to 1892 Monteith attended Cargilfield Preparatory School, Edinburgh, Scotland’s most famous preparatory school (founded in 1873; cf. E.T. Young, R.P. Dunn-Pattison). He then obtained an Open Scholarship to Fettes College, Edinburgh (founded 1870) from 1892 to 1897. The College, where Monteith ended up as a School Prefect, was “determinedly English in influence, melding an emphasis on rugby, learning and duty with Oxbridge-educated teachers and a purposeful sense of its own mission, ascetic but kindly”; it also refused to employ clergy.

Monteith matriculated at Magdalen as a Commoner on 21 October 1897, having been exempted from Responsions. He passed Divinity Prelims in Trinity Term 1898 and Literature Prelims in Hilary Term 1899. He was awarded a 2nd in Classical Moderations in Hilary Term 1899 and a 3rd in Jurisprudence in Trinity Term 1901. He took his BA on 3 August 1901. Because he intended to become an ordained minister in the Church of Scotland, he matriculated at Glasgow University in 1901, where he was taught by several distinguished Scottish scholars and where he did very well academically. In his first year (1901–02), he came fourth in the Junior Class of Divinity (Professor William Hastie (1842–1903)), fourth in Junior Hebrew (Professor James Robertson (1840–1920)) and fourth in Church History (Professor James Cooper (1866–1922)). In his second year (1902–03) he gained two merits, one in Junior Divinity and Biblical Criticism (Professor William Stewart (1835–1919)) and one in Ordinary Hebrew (Professor James Robertson), and was awarded a special prize for the recitation of Selected Chapters in Hebrew. In his third year (1903–04) he came third in Divinity and Biblical Criticism (Professor William Stewart), seventh in Church History (Professor James Cooper), and was awarded a merit for Syriac and a University Prize, the Jamieson Prize (£10), for excellence in examinations for the degree of BD (for which he was one of the 12 to graduate on 14 April 1904).

From summer 1904 to autumn 1906 he was a preaching assistant in South America, ministering to the British community in and around Buenos Aires, Argentina. Someone who knew Monteith there wrote a letter to the Spectator about three months after his death in action, citing him by name as an excellent reason why ordained clergymen should be allowed to enrol in the armed forces:

[Although at first astonishment was the chief feeling of the British community there, he quickly won their sympathies and hearts] when they realized what a different personality they had to deal with in him, as compared with the conventional, somewhat arid, clerical and personal characteristics of their old-time pastor. Not long come from Oxford, of good Scotch family and means, athletic, with a figure and a countenance like a young Greek god, he threw himself into the life of the place with a zeal and energy which never tired; and with a broad-mindedness and liberality of ideas which freshened and invigorated the social and spiritual atmosphere of the people, he became a great asset in its life, and did much good amongst rich and poor, and especially amongst the floating British seafaring element to be found in the great docks of the city.

On his return to Scotland in late 1906, Monteith spent some time as assistant to the Reverend Dr Ernest Playfair (1871–1951) in the Town Church of St Andrew’s, and in August 1907 he was appointed as the Presbyterian Minister of Elie Parish Church, Fife, by a majority of 133 to 29. He was ordained on 25 September 1907, and apart from visits to Glencairn and a short trip to Buenos Aires in 1910, he remained at Elie until early September 1914, when the St Andrew’s Presbytery granted him leave of absence for the duration of the war. He was one of the first ministers, possibly the very first minister, to enlist in the Army as a combatant. President Warren wrote of him posthumously: “[He] was no common man. […] Thoughtful and quiet […], he was also a man of rare character and force.”

War service 

Monteith had been a member of the Oxford University Rifle Volunteer Corps for two years, and when war came, he “could not withstand the call. ‘He could not,’ he said, ‘encourage others to go out without going himself’”. He began his military service by enlisting as a trooper in the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, but on 22 January 1915 he was commissioned Lieutenant in the 6th (Reserve) Battalion, the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort’s Own) (London Gazette, no. 29,048, 22 January 1915, p. 785) (cf. de Bernière Smith). During the long and dreary winter of 1914/15 he did much to keep up the men’s spirits while the Battalion was in camp at Sheerness, on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent.

After the Rifle Brigade’s 2nd (Regular) Battalion (part of the 25th Brigade, 8th Division) was involved in the disastrous attack at Fromelles on the Aubers Ridge on 9 May 1915, losing over 630 of its members in the process killed, wounded or missing, and all but three of its officers (see G.P. Cable), Monteith was transferred to the 2nd Battalion as a replacement officer in ‘C’ Company. He arrived in France between 27 and 29 May 1915 and on 31 May 1915 he and two other officers joined the 2nd Battalion at Estaires, near Neuve Chapelle, where it was mainly engaged in improving the trenches. The Battalion stayed in this sector of the front throughout the summer months until late September, and apart from shelling and sniping, it was a relatively quiet place to be. Its War Diary records that on 10 July, Monteith led a strong patrol “out from the left of the line & surprised a party of 10 Germans cutting grass, who ran away & thus avoided capture” and that he commanded a second patrol when it raided the German wire on 1 August and “reported a relief having taken place”.

The Battalion was still in this sector when the action at Bois-Grenier, three miles north of Fromelles and about the same distance south of Armentières, took place on 25 September 1915, the first day of the Battle of Loos (25 September–18 October 1915). The action was conceived as an adjunct to the main battle, whose purpose was to link the German front line with the British front line, and thereby shorten and strengthen the British position. So three battalions of 25th Brigade, including Monteith’s, were sent forward to capture a line of enemy trenches along a front of 1,200 yards that involved three forts. Monteith’s Battalion, with ‘C’ Company playing a pivotal role as a specialist company of bombers (grenade throwers), was on the right of the attack. At 04.25 hours the artillery bombardment that had been going on for four days already intensified for five minutes and at 04.30 hours it lifted. By 04.31 hours ‘C’ Company had captured “Corner Fort”, by 06.00 hours ‘C’ Company had reached the German second line, and by 10.00 hours the Battalion had established a strong point with a machine-gun and two trench mortars. Although “Bridoux Fort”, on the left of the attack, was taken by the 2nd Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment, “Angle Fort”, in the centre, held out, and a German counter-attack in the afternoon forced a general withdrawal. Monteith was killed in action early on, at about 04.45 hours, aged 37, and his Battalion lost 243 of its number killed, wounded or missing. The Battalion’s War Diary records that these losses

were due to the German rifle fire and to the really hard hand to hand and bombing fighting in the German first and second line trenches, the enemy being on both our flanks and in their second line trench during practically the whole day.

It adds, however: “Many Germans were killed and wounded, and about 18 captured, including 11 who were shot by German machine guns.” Monteith was mentioned in dispatches (London Gazette, no. 29,623, 13 June 1916, p. 5,951).

Monteith has no known grave. He is commemorated on Panel 10 of the Ploegsteert Memorial, on the War Memorial in Fettes School, on the Memorial in St Columba’s Church, Albert Street, Oxford (originally the Presbyterian Chaplaincy that was founded in 1908: the Church was dedicated in 1915), on a brass memorial tablet in Elie Parish Church, at Glencairn, and in St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, where he is named as one of the 14 ordained Ministers of the Church of Scotland who were killed in action as combatants. His widow received a gratuity of £140 and his son one of £46 13s 4d.

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

Special acknowledgements:

**Alexander Hall and Anthony Murray-Flutter, The Glencairn Memorial Book (Dumfries: Solway Offset Printers, 2007), pp. 15–17 and 21–23.

**Elie Parish Church Guild (ed.), Rev. W.N. Monteith [Elie, Dumfriesshire: privately printed, 2008]; includes his sermons of 9 August and 4 September 1914 (pp. 5–12), a report of his wedding (pp.13–15); and a pastoral letter to the congregation at Elie of 24 June 1915 (pp. 19–20).

Printed sources:

[Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 34, extra number (5 November 1915), p. 17.

[Anon.], ‘Should the Clergy Enlist’ [letter to the Editor], The Spectator, no. 4,568 (15 January 1916), p. 11.

Berkeley and Seymour, i (1927), pp. 133–8.

Andrew Davidson, Fred’s War: A Doctor in the Trenches (London: Short Books, 2013), pp. 22–3.

Archival sources:

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 2.

OUA: UR 2/1/33.

WO95/1731.

WO339/111.

On-line sources: 

University of Glasgow, ‘The University of Glasgow Story: Lieutenant William Neve Monteith’: http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/ww1-biography/?id=229 (accessed 18 January 2020).