McGregor, M

2nd Lieutenant Marcus McGregor

Marcus was born on March 7^th 1872, the son of Josiah and Fanny McGregor. He came to Dulwich in September 1886 at the same time as his younger brother, Josiah; two more of their brothers would later follow them to the College, E.J. and Ronald. Marcus’s Dulwich career lasted for nearly four years, leaving at Easter 1890 whilst a member of the Lower Third. After leaving he went out to India, where he spent five years before subsequently going to the Philippines. Whilst there he served as the local landowner in charge of large swathes of church land, acting as representative for a firm based in London. He later oversaw the sale of these lands to the American government. The U.S. governor in the Philippines at the time, with whom he negotiated, was William Howard Taft, who would later be elected President. Following this he sailed over to Chile and spent five years as a representative of the Lautaro Nitrate Company, based at Taltal.

Having had a career which took him around the globe, Marcus was back in England when war was declared in the summer of 1914, and he at once applied for a commission. He was gazetted to the Cheshire Regiment, in which he would be joined by his brother, Ronald, spending the winter of 1914 into 1915 in training with the 3^rd Battalion at Birkenhead. In March 1915 he was sent over to France and attached to the 2^nd Battalion of his regiment. He went on to spend three months in charge of the Road Guards Detachment at Poperinghe. Having rejoined his battalion he was killed in action on October 2^nd 1915 during the German attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt. His younger brother, Ronald, not only a fellow OA but also a fellow member of the Cheshires, had been killed earlier that year at Ypres.