Ewart Alan Mackintosh was born on 4 March 1893, the only son of Alexander Mackintosh and his wife, Lilian Rogers. Although he was born in
Brighton in
Sussex, his father's roots went back to
Clan Mackintosh in
Alness in Ross. Mackintosh, who was a member of the
University of Oxford Officers' Training Corps, tried to join the army immediately after war broke out in August and while still in his university course. He was rejected on the grounds of his poor eyesight. He reapplied and was accepted by the
Seaforth Highlanders, and was commissioned as a
second lieutenant on 31 December 1914. with Captain David Sutherland M.C. who subsequently published a war diary based on his reports to the
John O'Groat Journal. He returned to Britain in August 1915 after being wounded in
High Wood on the
Somme. He was stationed near
Cambridge for eight months during which time he was training cadets and he became engaged to Sylvia Marsh who was from a
Quaker family. On 16 May he led a trench raid near
Arras where fourteen of his men were wounded and two were killed. One of them, David Sutherland, inspired a poem "
In Memoriam". Mackintosh was now a temporary
lieutenant and he received the
Military Cross on 24 June 1916. His citation in the
London Gazette reads: Mackintosh had been trying to bring Sutherland, who had lost a number of limbs, back to the trenches. Sutherland died of his wounds and had to be left; he has no known burial place, but is commemorated on the
Arras Memorial. At the age of 23, Mackintosh regarded himself as a father to his men, and they affectionately called him "Tosh". Sutherland was a Scot, but many of Mackintosh's other charges were from New Zealand. He was buried in the Orival Wood Cemetery near
Flesquières in northern France. ==Legacy==