MacRobert's Reply

Rachel Workman MacRobert was born American--in Worcester, Mass.--but marriage to a Scottish laird made her a loyal Briton by more than simple law. Her husband was Sir Alexander MacRobert, baronet and laird of Douneside and Cromar, Aberdeenshire, one of that band of hardy Scots who went forth to build the Empire, making Scotland proud and England great. When he died in 1922, he left a million-dollar estate; Lady MacRobert herself became a director of the British India Corp. Ltd., which he had founded.

Their eldest son, Sir Alisdair, took over his father's job as head of B.I.C. Two years later he was killed in an air crash. The family title passed to Rachel MacRobert's second son, Roderic. In May 1941 Sir Roderic, a flight lieutenant in the R.A.F., was killed fighting for Britain over Iraq. Less than a year later, his younger brother, R.A.F. Pilot Officer Sir Iain MacRobert, 26, was reported missing in action over the North Atlantic. Stricken Rachel MacRobert made what she called "a mother's immediate reply." Enclosing a check for -L-25,000 to buy a Stirling bomber, she wrote to the Air Minister, "I have no more sons to wear the MacRobert badge or carry it in the fight . . . but if I had ten sons, I know they would all have followed that line of duty." The R.A.F. bought the bomber and named it MacRobert's Reply.

A year later, when Sir Iain was reported definitely dead, Lady MacRobert sent another check to buy four Hurricane fighters. "The MacRoberts always fight on," she wrote, and set to work on the project of turning her house and estate into a rest home for airmen.

Last week courageous Lady MacRobert, the last of the MacRoberts and Britain's most venerated wartime mother, died at 74, leaving behind her, as London's Daily Express wrote, "a legend to linger on as long as British youth takes to the skies."

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