Black Watch Soldier Stories – William Good

New funding provided by the Army Museums Ogilby Trust in November 2021 has ensured the Museum’s cataloguing project will continue for a further year. This phase of the ongoing project focuses on the Archive’s World War I collection. As Project Archivists, we catalogue collections of archive material relating to individual Black Watch soldiers. Our work includes arranging, describing and preserving the items, with the aim of making the collections more accessible for the public. To provide background to the collections and to better remember the soldiers they represent, we research and retell their military and personal life in the catalogues. By using records and personal documents that were donated to the Museum, we are able to provide a lens through which we can better understand the involvement and experiences of The Black Watch during the First World War.

Working with the collection these past months, I have discovered many fascinating life experiences and stories. Such a story is that of William Good, a Black Watch soldier who lied of his place of birth on his enlistment form, was captured by the Germans on the Western Front and escaped a prisoner of war camp just a few weeks before the end of the war.

William Good was born on 18th August 1895 in Manchester. He found employment as a patternmaker in a local shop and at 19 years old he attended a recruiting march for The Black Watch. In his own words, he decided to enlist, “in the spur of the moment”. Good was handed a notice after the march which read, “Recruits wanted for The Royal Highland Regiment – must be of Scottish birth”. With no Scottish roots or connections of his own, but wanting to enlist with The Black Watch, he claimed that his mother was born in Dundee. His enlistment was accepted.

After a year training in Tain, he was deployed to France and joined the 9th Battalion on the front line.