Donald's Story.
Donald Macleod was born in Glasgow in 1881 the son of Donald McFarlane Macleod, a tobacco merchant, and Helen MacLeod (nee Taylor)He was educated at Fettes College, Edinburgh. On finishing his education, he joined his father’s firm, MacLeod, Reid and Co. tobacco importers. Donald was a member of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, and also a member of the Birkenhead Park Rugby Football Club.
Donald MacLeod with the Birkenhead Rugby Club.
On the 12th November 1907 his younger brother, Lewis MacLeod, a promising rugby player who had won an international cap for Scotland, died suddenly from appendicitis.
By 1911 Donald was living at ‘Auchendrane’, Talbot Road, Oxton, his occupation was recorded on the census of that year as a tobacco merchant. Also living with him was his brother, Kenneth and sister, Elsie. They employed one cook and three housemaids.
In August 1914, following the outbreak of the First World War, Donald joined the 10th Battalion King’s Liverpool Regiment (Liverpool Scottish). He was promoted to Captain in that September and landed in France a few weeks later on the 2nd November.
On the 15th December 1914 Donald was wounded in the arm whilst his unit were withdrawn from the line near the Belgian village of Kemmel. He was treated at the time by the battalion’s medical officer Captain Noel Chavasse, who went on to win a V.C and bar before being killed in 1917. Donald’s wound was serious enough for him to be invalided to England to recover. He returned to the western front in the summer of 1915.
At dusk on the 27th September 1915, the battalion moved into dugouts in the Ramparts near the Lille Gate in Ypres. The war diary then describes the next day – ‘The following day, while Capt. D. MacLeod and Captain L. F. Dun were visiting the guard on Bridge 12, both officers and two men were unfortunately killed by a single high explosive shell.’
Captain Donald Macleod, aged 33, was buried at Brandhoek Military Cemetery, Belgium. In the grave next to him is Captain Leslie Finlay Dun.
Donald is also remembered on the Trinity with Palm Grove URC and Methodist Church War Memorial, the Birkenhead Park Rugby Club WW1 memorial and a memorial to the members of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, located inside the club and also in St. Hildeburgh’s Church, Hoylake.
The Birkenhead Park Rugby Club War Memorial
Captain Donald MacLeod was awarded the British, Victory medals and the 1914 star which were issued to his father of 12, Hyde Park Place, London.
Donald’s other brother, Kenneth, was a famous Scottish International rugby player as well as a cricketer with Cambridge University and Lancashire. Being a true all-round sportsman, he also played football for Manchester City. During the First World War he was a Captain with the Gordon Highlanders. He received shrapnel wounds in early 1915 but survived the war. Captain Kenneth Macleod died in 1967 in South Africa.
Captain Kenneth Macleod on his wedding day.
Research and photographs of Donald Macleod and Kenneth MacLeod by Chris Booth. Photograph of Donald as a rugby player courtesy of the Birkenhead Park Rugby Club.