Walter McFarlane Coulter
MC (1891 – 20 May 1917) was a Scottish amateur
footballer
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...
who played in the
Scottish League
The Scottish Football League (SFL) was a league featuring professional and semi-professional football clubs mostly from Scotland.One club, Berwick Rangers, is based in the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is located approximately 4 km sout ...
for
Queen's Park as a
right half
A midfielder is an outfield position in association football.
Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...
.
Personal life
Coulter grew up the son of a
sugarcane planter in the
Danish West Indies
The Danish West Indies ( da, Dansk Vestindien) or Danish Antilles or Danish Virgin Islands were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with ; Saint John ( da, St. Jan) with ; and Saint Croix with . The ...
and was sent to live in Scotland in 1894.
He was educated at
Thornliebank
Thornliebank ( Scots: ''Thonliebank'', Scottish Gaelic: ''Bruach nan Dealgan'') is a suburban area in East Renfrewshire, in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. Part of the Greater Glasgow conurbation, it is located on the Auldhouse Burn about s ...
School, the
High School of Glasgow
The High School of Glasgow is an independent, co-educational day school in Glasgow, Scotland. The original High School of Glasgow was founded as the choir school of Glasgow Cathedral in around 1124, and is the oldest school in Scotland, and the ...
and the
Royal College of Science and Technology
The Royal College of Science and Technology was a higher education college that existed in Glasgow, Scotland between 1887 and 1964, and is the predecessor institution of the University of Strathclyde. Its main building on George Street now serve ...
.
After leaving school, Coulter served an
engineering apprenticeship and prior to the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, he worked in the drawing office at
Fairfield Shipyard.
By spring 1915, half a year after the outbreak of the First World War, Coulter had enlisted in the
Highland Light Infantry
The Highland Light Infantry (HLI) was a light infantry regiment of the British Army formed in 1881. It took part in the First and Second World Wars, until it was amalgamated with the Royal Scots Fusiliers in 1959 to form the Royal Highland Fus ...
.
He was commissioned as a temporary
second lieutenant on 28 September 1915 and was awarded the
Military Cross
The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level pre-1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries.
The MC ...
for actions on 7 February 1917:
Captain Coulter was
killed in an attack on
Croisilles on 20 May 1917.
He is commemorated on the
Arras Memorial
The Arras Memorial is a World War I memorial in France, located in the Faubourg d'Amiens British Cemetery, in the western part of the town of Arras. The memorial commemorates 35,942 soldiers of the forces of the United Kingdom, South Africa and ...
.
Career statistics
References
Scottish men's footballers
1917 deaths
British Army personnel of World War I
British military personnel killed in World War I
1891 births
Highland Light Infantry officers
Scottish Football League players
Men's association football wing halves
Queen's Park F.C. players
Recipients of the Military Cross
People from the Danish West Indies
People educated at the High School of Glasgow
Alumni of the University of Strathclyde
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