Le bilan humain de la Bataille de Cambrai, au cours de laquelle plusieurs villages ont été détruits, s’avère effroyable : 45 000 victimes dans les rangs britanniques et autant dans les rangs Allemands. Parmi ces derniers, le poète Ewart Alan Mackintosh. Il écrit son célèbre poème « In Memoriam » en 1916 alors que, lieutenant au Seaforth Highlanders, il doit abandonner dans les lignes allemandes un de ses hommes blessé au cours d’un raid près d’Arras. Mackintosh tombe à 23 ans à Cantaing-sur-Escaut, le 21 novembre 1917, au deuxième jour de la bataille, d’une balle dans la tête. Mackintosh est très bien connu en Angleterre, principalement en Ecosse à Edinburgh, mais il est aussi commémoré dans sa ville natale de Brighton et à Oxford.
The human loss from the Battle of Cambrai, during which several villages were destroyed, is frightful : 45,000 victims in the British ranks and as many in the German ranks. Among these, the poet Ewart Alan Mackintosh. He wrote his famous poem "In Memoriam" in 1916, when he had to abandon in the German lines one of his men wounded during a raid near Arras. He was then lieutenant at the Seaforth Highlanders. Mackintosh fell in Cantaing-sur-Escaut on the 21st of November, 1917, on the second day of the battle, from a bullet in his head. Mackintosh is very well known in England, mainly in Scotland at Edinburgh, but he is also commemorated in his hometown of Brighton and Oxford.
