Reay, Scotland: In Memoriam

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The war poet, E. Alan Mackintosh wrote ‘In Memoriam’ about the loss in a trench raid of a young soldier, Private David Sutherland from Reay in 1916. Mackintosh won the Military Cross for this raid, but couldn’t shake his feeling of responsibility towards David, whose body he couldn't bring back. So you were David’s father, And he was your only son, And the new-cut peats are rotting And the work is left undone... Curiously David wasn’t an only son, but the family were so taken with Mackintosh’s work, that they referred to the poem on the family gravestone in Reay New Cemetery in Caithness by page number - p.40 in Mackintosh’s book (A Highland Regiment). Mackintosh couldn’t bring back David’s body, but he gave the family something they treasured enough to include on a gravestone. Louise Yeoman hears from David’s nephew Sinclair Wares and Mackintosh’s biographer Colin Campbell.