Youngest soldier in the trenches
- Samantha Elley
- Oct 7
- 3 min read
When Daniel Barker McMeechan came into the world in Blantyre, Scotland, 1898, he was the fifth child for William Andrew and first for William's third wife Christina Donaldson Barker. His childhood was marked with the births of three more brothers and two sisters. Sadly, one brother and one sister died in infancy.
Daniel's father was a baker and his mother was listed as doing home duties. With such a large family (10 children in all) there was no extra money and Daniel, as a young boy, would often play marbles with is friends to try and win some extra pennies to take home to his mother.
In 1914 the Great War, as it was to become known, had started overseas and Daniel wasted no time in signing up. He was 16 years old when he attended the military muster at West Dunbartonshire on 16th December, 1914 and joined the 9th Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, saying that he was actually 19 years old.
For the next six months he would fight on the battlefields of Europe until he was gassed in Ypres, and sent home on leave. While on leave he speaks to a local journalist in his home town and we have on record the experiences he went through in the trenches:
He says he did not exactly know how he felt when they were making the charge. He had certainly at that time no sense of fear. They were getting it so hot that, no doubt, each one of them felt that their time was up and they went into the thick of it, determined at least to do as much damage to the enemy as they possibly could.
(He) owned that it was true enough that he left his bayonet in one fellow and produced a very fine pipe that he took off the man. Personally, he had inhaled a great deal of gas and could scarcely breathe so when the charge was over, being able to walk, he was told to go to the dressing station.
Daniel met a number of colleagues on his way to the dressing station. One was limping badly so he put his arm around him to help him there. Another had lost four fingers from his right hand and had a bullet in his shoulder.
Daniel was told to make his way to the hospital to the other side of Ypres. On his way he had just passed a big building when he heard a noise like a tramcar coming. However, it was a bomb, known as a 'Jack Johnson' that landed on the building and reduced it to a heap of rubble.
In the trenches he has the memory of one German who stood up and called across to the British line to say he had been a barber in Glasgow and now had a wife and three children in Berlin.
"Ah well," said one of the boys as his rifle cracked out, "You will now have a widow and three of a family in Berlin."
The next stage of Daniel's war time experiences was when he re-enlisted after being discharged from the army. This time he went in to the navy under the assumed name of Renou Mair listing his occupation as a stage artist! He then fought in Gallipoli where he was wounded in the shoulder. His real identity was discovered on the battle field but he wasn't discharged until 1919.
Daniel would then work in an iron foundry after the war, marry his first wife, who died after giving him three children, then remarry and with the three children from his second marriage, emigrated to Australia. He died in 1973 and is buried at the Field of Mars cemetery, North Ryde.
Headstone of Daniel McMeechan.
References
'Daniel McMeechan', Scotlands People, Births, accessed 6th October, 2025, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
Family stories from Nan McMeechan Lees, daughter to Daniel McMeechan.
'McMeechan D.', West Dumbartonshire Scotland Military Muster Rolls, 1890-1917, accessed 6th October, 2025, Ancestry.com
'Fighting the Germans at Sixteen', Kirkintilloch Herald and Lenzie, Kilsyth, Campsie and Cumbernauld Press, June 9, 1915, Page 6
'Daniel Barker McMeechan alias Renou Mair', British National Archives, accessed 6th October, 2025
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