'Can't shoot a man with a cold' by E A Mackintosh
Four page extract from 'Can't shoot a man with a cold' by Lt E A Mackintosh MC 1893-1917 Poet of the Highland Division, published by Argyll Publishing. The extract is the Prologue which begins: "Ewart Alan Mackintosh aspired to be a poet. He wrote poetry in school, university and the army, and before he went to the Western Front for the first time arranged in his will for an anthology to be published. Although his poems are uneven in quality and reflect highs and lows of his experience, he worked at his writing, and wanted to be judged as a poet. But he was also a schoolboy, a student, a man in love, and a soldier."
The prologue ends: "Much of what Alan Mackintosh said, thought and did , as a young man and an officer may now seem mildly absurd. This is only justifiable if we ignore his background; or if hindsight is a legitimate basis for judgement. It is not. Our hindsight was bought at the expense of Mackintosh and his generation, and the succeeding generation, and their sacrifice has coloured our approach to patriotism, war, and the international community."
Dimensions: pdf file