SERJEANT ALEXANDER ROUGH
ARGYLL & SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS
23RD APRIL 1917 AGE 25
BURIED: TANK CEMETERY, GUEMAPPE, FRANCE
Alexander Rough was a miner from Stirlingshire. Married on 31 December 1913, he enlisted on 31 August 1914. By the time of his death he was a serjeant, surely a testament to his qualities. He was killed in action at the 2nd Battle of the Scarpe on 23 April 1917.
His wife, Margaret Hall Begg Rough, chose his inscription. It comes from a poem by Robert Burns, It Was a' For our Rightful King. After the 1745 Rebellion, when despite all being done that a man could do it was all done in vain, two lovers are to be parted as the man faces exile. There were plenty of lines that one might have thought Mrs Rough could have used from this poem: 'With, Adieu for evermore, my dear!', 'But I hae parted frae my love, never to meet again', 'I think of him that's far awa the lee-lang night, and weep'. But she didn't, she chose to say that it had all been in vain.
Margaret Rough can have had no idea how 'in vain' her husband's death was. If she had thought it would help bring peace, it was only 22 years after Alexander Rough's death that Britain was again at war with Germany, and only 27 years before their son, Alexander Thomas Begg Rough, was killed in action at Rimini on 16 September 1944.