236095 Sgt. Stephen Alfred McQuillin British Army 23rd Coy. Machine Gun Corps from:Battersea Sgt McQuillan was a regular with 2nd Btn Scottish Rifles (Cameronians) based in Mtarfa Barracks, Malta in 1914 and on notice to move to Alexandria. When hostilities started to escalate, the move to Egypt was cancelled and the battalion moved back to UK on Indiamen ship along with other two battalions in Malta.
They arrived in Southampton in September and marched to Baddersley Common before moving to Hursley Park to form part of 23rd Brigade in the 8th Division.
They moved to France on the SS Cornishman in early November 1914. Stephen must have been SNCO in charge of 2 Scottish Rifles machine guns as he was moved to MGC on its formation. He remained with the corps for the rest of war, but returned to the Cameronians after the war.
His step brother, Private Alfred Holman, was killed three months after arriving in France as a private in the Royal Field Artillery in May 1916 (he is buried at Dud's Corner). Alfred's son Alfred was born eight days before his father's death. Stephen married his step-brother's widow, the family moved to India (Quetta) with the Regiment and had three further children, in addition to Alfred and his elder sister Phyllis, in India and a sixth child (my father) when back in England. Stephen spent a period of the war convalescing in England after shooting off one of his knuckles in what was supposedly an accident with a recovered German Luger pistol.
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