The 16th Batallion The Royal Scots "McCraes Own" was formed on Wednesday 25th of November, when eleven professional footballers employed by Heart of Midlothian became his first enlistments. Hearts – leaders of the Scottish League – were then the most attractive side in Britain, so the news of the players’ action caused a nationwide sensation. After this, it took McCrae only six days to obtain the full complement of 1347 officers and men. Augmented by a substantial contingent of professionals from Raith Rovers and Falkirk, his volunteers included numerous local sportsmen, hundreds of Hearts ticket-holders and supporters, along with players and followers of many other clubs, including an estimated 150 supporters of Hearts’ great city rivals, Hibernian.
The battalion was duly taken on the strength of Lord Kitchener’s ‘New’ Army as the 16th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Scots. The move down to the Somme took place in May – giving them only a few weeks to prepare for the Push. The ultimate objective was a line running through fields slightly to the north of the fortified village of Contalmaison. The village was protected by two formidable entrenchments, ‘Kaisergraben’ and ‘Quadrangle’, each of which was screened by several bands of barbed wire, eight feet high and thirty yards broad. In order to reach this position, however, the attacker had first to negotiate the enemy ‘front system’, which consisted of three additional lines of trenches, each with its own dense entanglements. Every approach was covered by machine-guns. It was a veritable fortress.
At 7.30 on the morning of 1 July McCrae’s Battalion rose up from their shallow assembly ‘cuts’ and advanced in line abreast towards the wire. Shortly before 10 a.m. the remains of C Company, led by Captain Lionel Coles, arrived at Birch Tree Wood, about a thousand yards south-east of Quadrangle. Coles led his company out of the shelter of a shallow sunken road and found himself faced by three enemy Maxims. Within minutes he had lost half his strength. Most of the survivors were pinned down in the numerous shell-holes that peppered the surrounding meadows. At 11 a.m. Lionel Coles made a last attempt to cross Quadrangle. As he ran up the side of the road, a burst of machine-gun fire caught him in the chest, killing him instantly. A further nine days would pass before the village was finally captured.
This was the British Army’s ‘blackest day’: among 20,000 killed and 40,000 wounded were over a thousand officers and men from the division’s two ‘City of Edinburgh’ units, 15th and 16th Royal Scots – more than three-quarters of their total attacking strength. In spite of this, 16th Royal Scots was credited with achieving the deepest penetration of the enemy line anywhere on the battlefront that morning: a small party from C Company fought their way into the ruined village of Contalmaison, only to be overwhelmed by the opposition and chased back out again. The survivors withdrew to join their remaining comrades in a captured German strongpoint known as Scots Redoubt, where they held out in the face of fierce counter-attacks for three long days and nights.
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