Orival Wood Cemetery and the Scottish Poet Alan Mackintosh
The World War One Battle of Cambrai beginning in November 1917 was the first battle in which the British used armoured tanks on any scale. It was also very costly with about 45,000 casualties suffered on both sides.
One of these casualties was the poet Ewart Alan Mackintosh whose grave can be seen in the nearby Orival Wood Cemetery. He was the author of the poignant war poem In Memoriam which describes the moment when, in 1916 as a young lieutenant in the Seaforth Highlanders, he had to abandon a wounded man on German lines during a raid near Arras. Mackintosh himself was killed in fighting at Cantaing-sur-Escaut on 21 November 1917 at the age of twenty-four.
Taken from the internet rather than from a visit (that will come later), here are some images of the poet, his gravestone and the village of Cantaing-sur-Escaut (five miles south of Cambrai) where he was buried along with some of his fellow soldiers.
These lines from Mackintosh's poem 'A Creed' are engraved on the Scottish American War Memorial in Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh:
If it be life that waits I shall live for ever unconquered,
If death I shall die at last strong in my pride and free.