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.”

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