Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

Before the enactment of the national conscription, military service was voluntary during the first two years of the First World War. Various governments and military commands used soldiers as ‘cannon fodder’, that is, they had a total disregard for combatants – who were  treated as expendable pawns. Millions of soldiers died ignoble deaths along the Western Front, not to mention the many more that were wounded. ¹³

Thus, it was no surprise that by 1916 fewer young men wanted to volunteer to fight when they saw their friends and brothers being maimed and slaughtered like cannon fodder. When the British government realized that young men no longer wanted to ‘commit suicide’ by enlisting, they implemented National Conscription. This meant sending young men to their deaths on the battlefields for the sake of ‘national glory.’¹⁴  

Exemptions

Those who were medically unfit and wanted to apply for exemption had to present their case in front of a tribunal. This consists of prominent local men and a military representative. However, not everyone had the influence and connections to make up a fake disability in order to avoid military service. One example is a relative of my grandmother, Donald MacLeod, who faked a foot injury. ¹⁵

Alexander Whitecross Harkness

Like my father, his father, Alexander Whitecross Harkness, avoided military service during the First World War. This was not because he faked a disability; it was probably because he was an electrician working in a key industry. I don’t have the specifics, but in one of the few photos of him (in fact the only one of him with his wife, Georgina), they were on the deck of what seems to be a gunboat or battleship. Thus, it’s possible that this was sometime during the First World War.

It may also be surmised, as mentioned, that he was exempt from military service because he worked in engineering, a key industry. Moreover, that was specifically engineering work related to the Royal Navy and the maintenance of their boats and ships. 

Furthermore, it is not unthinkable that his photo with his wife Georgina¹⁶ on the deck of a gunboat or battleship was taken at Rosyth Naval Dockyard. In other words, perhaps my grandfather, again like my father, worked at Rosyth Naval Dockyard. The dockyard is not that far from my grandparents’ home on 134 Gorgie Road, Edinburgh. To travel to Rosyth by rail from Edinburgh, they would have to cross the magnificent Forth Bridge.   

Modern National Conscription

Almost one hundred years later, humanity has made great technological progress with the various digital inventions. However, so-called ‘civilized’ peoples have made little psychological progress. The human brain seems to be still stuck in the jungle with the apes. Today’s leaders are still using the young men of their countries as cannon fodder to be sent to their deaths for no explicable reason: “Like Stalin before, the regime is using prisoners as cannon fodder in Ukraine.”

¹³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Front_(World_War_I)

¹⁴ https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/richmond-castle/history-and-stories/ww1-conscription-conscience/ Read 12 August 2022.

¹⁵ Military veteran and Mayor Pete Buttigieg accuses Donald MacLeod of using his privileged status to fake a disability in order to avoid serving in Vietnam. https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/05/24/pete-buttigieg-trump-disability-vietnam-intv-newday-vpx.cnn

¹⁶ Apart from the ‘mystery’ wedding photo discussed later in this book.