Pte 49565 David Mackie

• Age: 22
• From: Liverpool
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 20th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Henin Crucifix Cem
  Panel Ref: Sp.Mem.6

David Mackie was born on 14th November 1894 in Liverpool the son of James Mackie and his wife Catherine (née  Cummins). His father was born in Greenock, Scotland and his mother was born in Ireland, no marriage record has been found. David was baptised at St Albans R.oman Catholic Church on 24th November 1894. His parents had four children; John Robert born in 1890, Mary Agnes (Maggie) born 1892, David and Catherine born in 1896.

On the 1891 Census the family were living at 119 Athol Street, Liverpool. His father, James, (recorded as John) was born in Scotland and is recorded as a 31 year old fireman at a gas works, his mother, Catherine, is 19 years of age and was born in Ireland, their son John R. is just 3 months old. They have a boarder, a 70 year old seaman, John Harcus, born in Scotland. 

His mother died, aged 29, and was buried at Ford Cemetery on Christmas Eve, 24th December 1898. 

His father remarried in 1899 to St Helens born, Annie Fairclough, a spinster 11 years his junior at 32 years of age. They were married on the 12th December at St Aidan's Church, Kirkdale. She had a son Thomas Fairclough who is shown on the 1901 Census as Thomas Mackie. Grateful thanks are extended to Susan Himycz who has provided us with details of this man as follows; Thomas was my Grandfather, Thomas Regan, who was born in 1895 in the Toxteth Workhouse to Catherine Regan ( a presumed single woman). After the war my Grandad always referred to Annie Fairclough (Mackie) as his mother, due to the fact that it was the only mother he knew.

The 1901 Census shows the family are living at 1 Steel Street, Liverpool. David is 6 years of age. His father James (recorded as John) was born in Scotland and is recorded as a 45 year old stoker at a gas works, his step mother Annie is 34 years of age and was born in St Helens. His siblings at the time of the census were: John 10, Margaret 9, Thomas 5 and Catherine 4.

In 1902 David's sister Mary Agnes (Maggie) died aged 10 and his father died, aged 44, in the December quarter.

His sister Catherine died in 1903.

The 1911 Census shows that the family are still living at 1 Steel Street. Head of the household is Anne Mackie, a widow, born in St Helens who is shown to be 44 years of age and working as a Charwoman. David aged 16 is shown as an errand boy and is referred to as her step son as is his brother John who is a 20 year old car cleaner. Also present is her son Thomas Fairclough who is 15 and a shop boy.    

Prior to the outbreak of war David had been employed at Bibby’s Oil Cake Mills, Great Howard Street, Liverpool. 

He enlisted in Liverpool and followed his brother John into the 8th Battalion (Irish) of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 3697. He served overseas from 28th June 1915. Following a transfer he was serving in the 20th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 49565 when he was killed in action on the 09th April 1917 during the Battle of Arras, aged 22. 

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09^th April 1917

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day  in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89^th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19^th King's on the right and the 20^th King’s on the left. The 17^th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and he 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they  were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen  - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19^th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20^th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21^st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21^st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20^th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89^th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19^th and 20^th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10^th April.

Of the 17^th King’s  - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when  after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded. 

David now rests at Henin Crucifix Cemetery, France with a Special Memorial headstone which contains the inscription at the top "Known to be buried in this Cemetery" and contains an epitaph which reads:

“THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT”

The epitaph comes from Ecclesiasticus 44 verse 13 and was chosen by Rudyard Kipling. These headstones commemorate casualties whose graves in a cemetery were destroyed or who were known to buried in the cemetery but the exact whereabouts within the cemetery were not recorded. 

Henin-sur-Cojeul was captured on 02nd April 1917, lost in March 1918 after an obstinate resistance by the 40th Division, and retaken on 24 August 1918 by the 52nd (Lowland) Division.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery is named from a calvary standing on the opposite side of the road. It was made by units of the 30th Division after the capture of the village in 1917.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery contains 61 burials and commemorations of the First World War. Two of the burials are unidentified and eight graves, destroyed in later fighting, are now represented by special memorials.

The cemetery was designed by G H Goldsmith.

Liverpool Daily Post 23rd August 1916

MACKIE - August 16, died of wounds, at Perth Red Cross Hospital, Corporal J. Mackie, 7, Louis street, Liverpool.

He is also commemorated on the following Memorials:

St Anthony’s Church, Scotland Road, Liverpool

J Bibby and Sons Ltd, now sited at Cargill, Brocklebank Mill & Refinery, Regent Road, Bootle.

His elder brother John had enlisted in the 8th (Irish) Battalion of K.L.R. with the service number 60. He served overseas from 03rd May 1915 and had reached the rank of Corporal when he died on 16th August 1916, aged 25. John was shot in the spine in 1916 and was returned to the UK where he was treated in hospital in Perth, Scotland where he died on 16 August 1916. He now rests at Ford Roman Catholic Cemetery but had no CWGC headstone for 99 years. However, in 2015 a special review by CWGC finally decided that John was due a military headstone. He now rests at Ford R.C. Cemetery at R.1117. He was married to Maggie.  

We currently have no further information on David Mackie, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.