223204 Pte. Alexander Shiels British Army 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders from:Leith, Scotland Alexander Shiels joined the Army shortly after the outbreak of the Great War and embarked for Belgium with the First Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in March 1915.
One month later he saw action in the Second Battle of Ypres where he was gassed in one of the first poison gas attacks ever launched by the Germans.
After recovering from the gas and a subsequent bout of influenza his battalion was transported to Marseilles from where it embarked on a ship for Salonika in Greece. After two years in the mountainous wastelands to the north of Salonika, Alexander was wounded in action on 4th September 1918, suffering gunshot wounds to the neck, right shoulder and thigh. After a month he was pronounced out of danger and transferred from Salonika to a hospital ship in the Mediterranean, the Glengorm Castle. After a spell in Malta he was invalided back to Scotland in early 1919.
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