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2nd Lieutenant Kenneth Cortlandt
MACGREGOR

2nd Battalion King’s Own Scottish
Borderers

Date of birth: 21st January 1896

Date of death: 26th February 1915

Killed in action aged
19
Commemorated on the Menin Gate Panel 22

Kenneth Cortlandt
MacGregor was born at Buckingham House, St Mary's, Brecknock in Wales on
the 21st of January 1896 the younger son of Cortlandt George MacGregor,
orange grower and gentleman, and Margaret Josephine (nee Picton-
Turbeville) Macgregor of Llantrisant House, Llantrisant in Wales.

He was educated at the King's School Wimbledon and at Lancing College
where he was in Heads House from September 1910 to December 1912.

He was then educated by a tutor in Germany before going on to the Royal
Military College Sandhurst in November 1913 and was commissioned as a 2nd
Lieutenant in the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers on
the 30th of September 1914.

He was posted to Portland on the 1st
of October of that year and was due to go to France but fell ill with a
bout of malaria. On his recovery he went France with a draft for the 2nd
Battalion of his regiment on the 5th of December 1914.

On the
20th of February 1915 the 2nd Battalion King's Own Scottish Borderers
relieved a battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment in the trenches at
Verbranden Molen in the Ypres Salient. On the 26th of February 1915
Kenneth MacGregor was shot by a sniper while in the trenches and died
instantly.

He wrote in a letter home:-

"I'd much rather be
killed myself than lose my men---any officer would."

Following his
death the Heads House tutor (1910-1913), the Reverend Adam Fox, wrote from
Lancing to his mother in a letter dated the 12th of March 1915:-

"My dear Mrs Macgregor (sic)
Mrs Bowlby was good enough to send round
to me the letters you had about Kenneth from his company commanders. One
knew well enough that he would render a good account of himself, but how
soon he had done his work. I think perhaps you would like to know --or at
any rate I should like you to know that at one time when Kenneth was here
I became very unpopular in the headmaster's house through being severe to
one of the house captains, and Kenneth was about the only boy who stuck to
me; I didn't know at the time, but people told me afterwards how he stood
up for me--and it wasn't that I had done anything in particular for him,
but I think he had a loyal spirit through and through, and also what is so
rare at school an independent judgement and the courage to express it.
This must have made him a good soldier I am sure, and it made him very
loveable; your sense of loss must be very great; please accept my deepest
sympathy"
Adam Fox

His brother, Lieutenant
Cortlandt Richard MacGregor 2nd Battalion South Wales Borderers, was
killed in action at Gallipoli on the 5th of May 1915.

His father
applied for his medals in April 1921.

Heads
House

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