page_title: Alan Burns, 4th Baron Inverclyde
section_title: Military career
hierarchical_section_title: Alan Burns, 4th Baron Inverclyde / Military career
caption_attribution_description: English: Arms of the Lord Inverclyde.
context_page_description: John Alan Burns, 4th Baron Inverclyde, KStJ was a Scottish nobleman, the son of James, 3rd Lord Inverclyde and Charlotte Mary Emily née Nugent-Dunbar.
context_section_description: Joining the Scots Guards, he was wounded by a German bullet while going 'over the top' in France. He reached the rank of lieutenant in the First World War.
  As a subaltern in the Scots Guards he fought in France until wounded by a bullet through the palm of one hand. Gangrene impeded swift healing, but at last he was ready to return to the front and confided in a friend that if he had to die for it, he would try to win a decoration for gallantry in action to make his father proud of him. But instead of being sent overseas he was shunted into a 'cushy' job at the War Office.
  During the Second World War he served in France as a captain in the Scots Guards and as ADC to the General Officer Commanding Lines of Communication before being evacuated from St Nazaire. He was appointed Honorary Colonel of the newly formed 74th (City of Glasgow) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, in the Territorial Army on 11 January 1939, and held the position until 1944.  
  Inverclyde was on board the RMS Lancastria when she was sunk off St Nazaire on 17 June 1940. He was rescued by the crew of HMT Cambridgeshire, a 443-ton anti-submarine trawler, which had been requisitioned by the navy in August 1939; she was then given a 4-inch gun, machine guns and depth charges, she herself surviving the war and, after returning to peacetime trawling in 1945 as the Kingstone Sapphire, was scrapped in 1954. After returning to England, Inverclyde presented each of his rescuers with a round rosewood box full of cigarettes, each box with an engraved silver plaque, each individually named and then given the wording "... HMS Cambridgeshire, St Nazaire to Plymouth, 17 to 19 June 1940, from a grateful passenger, Inverclyde/Scots Guards".
  Burns succeeded as Lord Inverclyde on the death of his father on 16 August 1919, and was invested as a Knight of the Venerable Order of Saint John and admitted to the Royal Company of Archers.
caption: Arms of Lord Inverclyde
exif: {}