Lieutenant-Colonel John Meiklejohn
7th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

We spent the night in considerable trepidation. Three times the carriers tried to come up, but couldn’t manage it … Lieutenant “Sailor” Sills, of Stirling, my last remaining officer, said he would go direct them. They must have been German carriers. Anyway, the last we heard was a shout “Up the Argylls,” the roar of a grenade. He hasn’t been heard of since.

(Meiklejohn quoted in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10 Jan 1943, 40)

Born on 28 March 1904 in Northwood, Middlesex, England, John Cusance Meiklejohn worked in the London officer for the Scottish Amicable Life Assurance Society. He belonged to the Territorial Army, serving as a captain with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He commanded a company in the 7th Battalion during the Second Battle of El Alamein. After securing his objective on 26 October 1942, he found the Germans now had his group surrounded. Meiklejohn gathered two hundred soldiers from other companies and held out for forty-eight hours. After rescue by British tanks, he remarked to the press, “I wouldn’t like to go through it again.”

Lieutenant Frederick Arthur Sills (1906-1942) was killed, and Meiklejohn was the only officer left standing. In a rare honour for a captain, he earned the Distinguished Service Order:

Capt. Meiklejohn was short of ammunition and had very little food and water, and all attempts to get supplies through to him failed.  During the remaining six hours of darkness on the first night after the attack he was constantly threatened by enemy counter-attacks, but he successfully held them off by intensive artillery fire which he himself directed round his position by wireless.  Throughout a very trying time he not only held tenaciously to an important objective but by his own unaided effort and example maintained the morale of his men, and gave an outstanding display of courage, leadership and ability.

After hearing a news broadcast of this action at home, his sister wrote in a letter to an American relative:

I don’t think I have ever experienced anything so overwhelmingly exciting as hearing on the wireless of the doings of my own brother, when we didn’t even know for certain that he had been in action … As a rule, the BBC give warning to relatives when they are going to broadcast like that about a member in the forces, but we got no warning. It has all been a little too much for mother, and she has been in bed with an attack of what is called influenza, but I think it is mostly mental wear and tear and suspense, excitement and pride.

At Wadi Akarit in April 1943, Meiklejohn described his company’s successful advance: “As soon as we poured over the top of the ditch, our lads went belting for the enemy’s positions as hard as they could go. And the Italians just poured out of the ground. It was just a case of booting them back to our lines.” In fall 1943, the battalion returned to the United Kingdom along with the rest of the 51st Division to prepare for D-Day.

In May 1944, Meiklejohn replaced Lieutenant-Colonel Angus Rose, who had been appointed to command the 7th Argylls at the start of the year. An Argylls officer who had escaped the defeat at Singapore in 1942, Rose intended to impose stricter discipline on the battalion but “completely failed to gain the confidence of either his officers or his men.” Brigadier J.A. Oliver of 154th Infantry Brigade had further requested his removal due to Rose being “obsessed with jungle warfare ideas to the exclusion of most other considerations.”

As a result, weeks later, Meiklejohn led the 7th Argylls into the battle of Normandy on 7 June 1944. He remained in command until evacuated from leg wounds suffered on 12 August. He was among eight other officer and over fifty other rank casualties that day. Lieutenant-Colonel Donald Ninian Nicoll, formerly of the disbanded 1st Tyneside Scottish, assumed command of the 7th.

Meiklejohn died on 10 September 1988 in Sedgemoor, Somerset.