Chum - A Memoir

Fergus Boyle, MA 1981

“Chum” memorialises Charles Grant Tennant, who died at Aubers Ridge in 1915, during an action that occurred on the First World War’s “forgotten front” in the Artois region of France.

Using letters and diaries, including Charles’ own account of the last three months of his life, poems and other writings, Fergus Boyle, a great-nephew, has put together an account of a life lived and then lost and, in all probability, likely to have been forgotten altogether, as all who knew him in life are now gone.

The memoir also serves to commemorate the many hundreds of men of the 1/4th Seaforth Highlanders who served with Charles and who also lie, many of them with no known grave, in the fields of France.

Charles grew up in a prosperous Victorian Scots family, yet had a character which endeared him to all he met whatever their background - witty, talented and loyal, he had everything to live for - he was recently engaged and was secure in his roles in the family businesses - but his sense of duty overcame his pacifist nature and he volunteered as a private soon after the outbreak of war, before obtaining a commission as a second Lieutenant.

Even though his military career lasted barely seven months, his commanding officer called him a “born soldier” taking to soldiering “like a duck to water”. He was killed, the last of his men to fall, as they went over the top in an action which failed to achieve any advantage.

ISBN: 9781092897730