Cpl 57500 William McIntosh Ross

Before William’s birth in 1881 the family lived in Old Machar, at 6 South College Street, his father was a Hackney carriage driver (also in the household William’s uncle James McIntosh).

 

They are still at 6 South College Street in 1891, his father 38, is now a grocer’s porter. They have five children, William is one year old.

 

At some point the family moved to Garmouth, 45 miles northeast of Inverness, close to the coast of the Moray Firth. The Morayshire Roll of Honour states that William lived in Garmouth for twenty years, suggesting the family moved in about 1897.

 

The 1901 Census finds them in Garmouth, where his father, 48, is the innkeeper at the Star Inn.  His mother is 53, James, 18, is a miller, Margaret, 16, has no occupation. Elizabeth, 14, and William, 11, are at school.

 

Newspaper records show his father running the Star Inn in 1904 and 1908 but unfortunately the 1911 Scotland Census is not available. Before enlisting William was employed as a tailor.

 

The Highland Games were held in Recreation Park in Garmouth in July 1911.  Newspaper reports mention John Ross, a judge, and a number of Ross competitors. It is not known whether William or his family participated, but it was no doubt a highlight of the year for the local population.

 

His medal roll shows that William served as Corporal with regimental number 1251 in the 6th (Morayshire) Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders, a Territorial unit headquartered at Garmouth. They had just departed for annual camp when war was declared. They were immediately recalled and mobilised. 

 

William shipped to France with his battalion on 01st May 1915 as part of the 152nd Brigade, 51st (Highland) Division. They were rushed to the defence of Ypres, in action until 19th May when they moved to Estaires on the River Lys.  

 

They saw action at Festubert and Givenchy before moving south, taking over the line near Hamel on the Somme.  In 1916 they were in action during the attack on High Wood and the Battle of the Ancre, capturing Beaumont Hamel, and taking more than 2000 prisoners. 

 

He was subsequently transferred to the 19th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment and was serving as Corporal 57500 when he was killed in action on 09th April 1917, aged 27.

Details of the action of 09/04/1917:

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. 

William now rests at St Martin Calvaire Cemetery in France. 

 

The village of St. Martin-sur-Cojeul was taken by the 30th Division on 9 April 1917. It was lost in March 1918 but retaken in the following August. St. Martin Calvaire British Cemetery was named from a calvary which was destroyed during the war. It was begun by units of the 30th Division in April 1917 and used until March 1918. Plot II was made in August and September 1918. The cemetery contains 228 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, five of them unidentified. There are also three German graves within the cemetery. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

 

He earned his three medals.

 

A Medal Roll shows William’s previous service as Private 15379, Army Cyclist Corps. However, his medals were later amended (05/11/1920), the Army Cyclist unit and regimental number were crossed off, and replaced with Seaforth Highlanders.

 

His Army effects and a War Gratuity of £13-10s went to his mother.

 

His brother James served in France with the the 3rd and 4th Seaforth Highlanders and the 16th Scottish Rifles, and was invalided home with trench fever.

 

His mother appears to have died in 1923.  It is not known when his father died.

 

He is commemorated on the following memorials;

Garmouth and District War Memorial
 

Garmouth District Roll of Honour

Scottish National War Memorial

Morayshire Roll of Honour.