WW2 100 – 13 September 1945 - An Argentine connection: Lieutenant Evan MacDonald Macrae (1915-45) Royal Artillery 136 Field Regt

 

Continued from 6 July 1945

AIRCRAFTWOMAN 1^ST CLASS FRANCES JOAN WATTS (1922-1945)

475349, Women's Auxiliary Air Force

https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2024/01/aircraftwomam-1st-class-frances-joan.html

 

 

 

Buenos Aires (Chacarita) British Cemetery. Image credit: www.ww2cemeteries.com

On 13 November 2016, just over 70 years after the end of WW2, a ceremony was held at the British Cemetery in Buenos Aires. The cemetery contains 11 headstones of casualties from the war.

It is here that the name of Lieutenant Evan MacDonald Macrae appears rather than on Budleigh Salterton’s War Memorial. Yet the 30-year-old died not in Buenos Aires but in Burma.

His connection with Budleigh is not obvious, but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) record lists him as the son of Evan Macrae and his wife Doris, née Wild, of Budleigh Salterton, Devon. The CWGC listing ‘Evan Mac Macrae’ is surely a typographical omission.

Evan and Doris Macrae may well have maintained business or residential connections in Britain. Following their son’s death on 13 September 1945, a notice in the London Gazette of 26 March in the following year refers claims against the deceased’s estate to the Trustee Department of the Westminster Bank in Liverpool, or to the Liverpool solicitor who was handling his affairs.  

 

San Julian Bay. Image credit: Wikipedia

The Gazette notice was the first clue to the Macrae family’s links with Argentina; young Evan’s residence is given as the town of San Julian, situated on a natural harbour in Patagonia. Distant from the Argentine capital and sparsely populated, the region is celebrated mainly as one of the landing places visited by 16^th century navigators like Ferdinand Magellan and Sir Francis Drake. Yet it has had strong links with Britain for over two centuries thanks to its settlement by Scottish pioneers.

One of the first was John Farquhar Macrae, the son of Donald and Margaret Macrae, born in 1861 at Kintail, Wester Ross. In his early twenties, he crossed the Atlantic in around 1883 and settled in Argentina to rear cattle, finding himself the owner of over 500 horses and 2,000 sheep within a few years. In 1886, with only five men to assist him, he drove his animals southwards from the province of Rio Negro to the Strait of Magellan. The group trekked over 2,000 miles to an area of over 80,000 acres which Macrae leased for ten years. He then trekked further south, soon becoming spoken of as the ‘undisputed monarch of Tierra de Fuego’ according to a 1905 article in the San Franciso Call newspaper.

Life was difficult for the early pioneers of this remote part of Patagonia where sheep and cattle were vulnerable to bad weather and disease. However by the late 1800s the export of wool and sheepskins became easier thanks to regular arrivals of ships owned by Scottish companies. Refrigerator ships and freezing plants allowed the export of mutton.  Cattle ranch owners like John Farquhar Macrae, who was reputed to have amassed a fortune, enjoyed a comfortable way of life in fine homes and sent their children away to be educated at schools in the capital and even in Britain.

 

The memorial to John Farquhar Macrae (1861-1926) and his wife Helen (1874-1957) in  Clachan Duich Burial Ground, Ross and Cromarty

John Farquhar Macrae died in 1926 at Buenos Aires, aged 64. Along with other expatriates he remained fiercely attached to his Scottish heritage, revisiting his family in Wester Ross.

 

The steamer Oruba, built at Barrow in 1889, sailed from Liverpool to Valparaiso

Inspired by his picture as he strode up the gangway of the steamer Oruba at Liverpool docks, on his way back from Britain to Tierra de Fuego, the San Francisco Call newspaper wrote admiringly of him ‘in new kilts and plaid and playing a pibroch of triumph on his pipes’.

Attachment to their home country drew thousands of expatriates from South America back to Britain to fight in WW1. A book entitled Activities of the British Community in Argentina During the Great War 1914-1919, published in 1920, gave the names of some 4,852 volunteers from Argentina. Of those, 528 appear on the book’s Roll of Honour.

Another book, The Clan Macrae with its Rolls of Honour and of Service in the Great War, compiled by Ella Macrae-Gilstrap of Eilean Donan and Ballimore and published in 1923 at Aberdeen, lists a Captain Evan Macrae who came from Buenos Aires where he apparently held an important appointment as Water Engineer on the Pacific Railway. On arrival in Britain he joined the Officers Training Corps (OTC) of London University. He was mentioned in the London Gazette of 27 February 1918.

Could this have been Lieutenant Evan MacDonald Macrae’s father?

 

Royal Artillery cap badge. Image credit: Wikipedia

History repeated itself when the younger Macrae also crossed the Atlantic to join the fight against Axis forces in WW2. His name with Service Number 217054 is listed in the London Gazette of 18 November 1941 among cadets who had been given an emergency commission in the Royal Artillery as Second Lieutenant, with effect from 30 October 1941.     

 

Badge of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF)  

His wife Lucy Florence seems to have accompanied him as she is listed among those from Argentina who joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). She enlisted at Gloucester at some point after June 1941.

 

A 25-pounder of 36th Division in action in Burma, 1944. Image credit: Imperial War Museum; Wikipedia

It has not been possible as yet to discover how either of the couple served during the war. Evan may have served in other regiments of the Royal Artillery, and even in Europe or North Africa before his death.

 

 The Rose and the Arrow - A Life Story of 136th (1^st West Lancashire) Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, 1939-1946, by G. Robertson

However he seems to have been posted to the Far East, to serve in the 136th Field Regiment (1st West Lancashire) of the Royal Artillery in Burma – now called Myanmar – in August 1945. A history of the Regiment has been published, as seen above.

The 136th Field Regiment went to India from the UK in March 1943, moving to Burma in September 1943.  Field Regiments of the Royal Artillery were usually found serving as part of an infantry division. As the war went on, all regiments were eventually equipped with the 25-pounder gun.  

 

Image credit: Imperial War Museum © IWM CB(OPS) 5008

One month after his posting, his death was recorded when he drowned near the Sittaung Bridge in Burma. The iron railway bridge over the River Sittaung, pictured above in this aerial reconnaissance photo, had been destroyed in the face of the advancing Japanese on 23 February 1942

Lucy Florence Macrae seems to have remarried after Evan’s death, changing her name to become Mrs Austen. Sadly she apparently died of injuries received in a road accident.

 

The Rangoon Memorial. Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Evan’s body was presumably recovered and buried at the Rangoon Memorial in Myanmar, which contains the graves of a total of 26,854 casualties from WW2.

 

The next post is for Captain Hubert John Bale (1898-1947), who died on 27 March 1947 having served with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.

You can read about him at

https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2023/10/ww2-75-prisoner-of-japanese-captain.html