2nd. LIEUTENANT COLIN GRAHAM GORDON
3rd Battalion Gordon Highlanders.
Colin was born in Bridport in 1889, the youngest of four children born to Henry and Bessie Gordon. He was the only son . . . his sisters were Mabel, Agnes and Gladys.
His father was a civil engineer and acted as Secretary and Manager to the Water Works Company in Bridport. The family was comfortably off, and they were helped in their home at 48 West Bay Road, by a servant, Ada Biles and a housemaid Nora Biles.
Colin spent the first twenty years of his life in the family home, but in his early twenties he moved to London, where he started training as a Law Student/Solicitor. Around this time, he met and married his future wife – Dorothy Damar and they made their married home in Ramsgate in Kent.
With the outbreak of war, Colin enlisted with the London Regiment and was promoted to Lance Corporal in this unit. He was wounded in the knee in the Battle of Messine Ridge and was sent home for treatment.
When he recovered, he returned to the Somme sector, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant with the Gordon Highlanders. He had been in France only a few weeks with his new regiment when the Somme Offensive started on July 1st, 1916.
Colin was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
In a letter to his widow Dorothy, his commanding officer wrote “He was shot through the head, leading his men gallantly – a fearless soldier, whose loss we all mourn.” He was just 25.
Colin is buried in the Gordon Cemetery, near Mametz.