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2nd Lt. David Stuart Spence
British Army 66th Bde. A Battery, Royal Field Artillery
from:Stromness, Orkney
(d.13th Dec 1915)
David Stuart Spence was born on the 18th November 1892 in Stromness, the third son of William Spence, a baker born in Victoria, Australia, and Susanna Spence (née Smith), born in Stromness where she and William married in 1888. Stuart went to school in the town and then became a student at Edinburgh University. He had just graduated M.A. from the university, when he successfully applied for a commission in the Special Reserve of Officers in March 1915. Stuart had served in Edinburgh University O.T.C. as a gunner and attended 88 drills there, so was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in his preferred branch, the Royal Field Artillery. Stuart joined the 2/1st East Lancs Brigade RFA in the south of England. After a few months training, Stuart was posted to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and travelled out to Gallipoli.
Stuart landed at Cape Helles on the 20th September and joined the 1/1st East Lancs Brigade RFA. However, two days later he was transferred to join 66th Brigade RFA, one of several, of the always too few, British field artillery brigades that served away from their parent division at Gallipoli. The 66th Brigade remained at Helles, while its division, the New Army 13th, moved to Anzac and then to Suvla (it eventually returned to Helles after Stuart’s death).
The Gallipoli campaign had settled down to trench warfare when Stuart Spence arrived there, but the artillery was kept busy supporting minor British attacks and stopping those of the Turks, also in the continuous counter-battery fire. The French had started to withdraw their Senegalese infantry on 12th December, but Stuart's battery, "A" of the 66th Brigade, was probably firing in support of the French when he was killed in action on the next day.
A letter sent to his father in March 1916 stated that Second Lieutenant D.S. Spence, Royal Field Artillery, was buried at Zimmerman Farm Cemetery (French) and that the Rev. J. Duncan officiated. However, that grave was not identified when the Imperial War Graves Commission consolidated the Gallipoli cemeteries after the Armistice, so David Stuart Spence is commemorated on Panel 21 of the impressive Helles Memorial. Stuart was 23 years old, when he died on 13th December 1915 on Gallipoli.
