Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Mackenzie
6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers

I went on to tea with 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers, which was commanded by Winston [Churchill] for a time in the last war. Ian Mackenzie, who has been C.O. for the last six months, is a great little man. He’s only thirty and has done brilliantly. But I wouldn’t have recognised him for the gay, handsome chap he was when we two crossed the Channel together to join the B.L.A. on that sunny July day so many years ago. He looks ten years older; in fact, I had to look at his badges of rank when he came into the room. He admits he always feels tired nowadays.

(Martin Lindsay, So Few Got Through, 254)

Born in Johannesburg on 7 September 1914, Ian Mackenzie was a partner in a South African accounting firm. He had been educated in Scotland and obtained a degree in philosophy and economics from Pembroke College, University of Oxford in 1935 before returning to his home country. A prewar officer in the Transvaal Scottish Regiment, Mackenzie transferred to the 4/5th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers while visiting London on business in September 1939. He served as a lieutenant during the Battle of France and was on the last ship to evacuate Cherbourg ahead of the advancing German forces.

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