224602 Capt. John Duncan Mackie MC.British Army 14th Btn. Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders from:Glasgow My father, J. Duncan Mackie, was a territorial army officer before the 1914-1918 war. He had played a large part in the St Andrews University OTC and he made several practice air reconnaissance flights from Leuchars aerodrome.
He was mobilised with the 14th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and was in Edinburgh Castle for part of his annual training when war was declared in August 1914. He said that he could remember thinking on that beautiful summer's day what had this war in a far off country got to do with him personally.
His battalion went to Devon for training (he had until recently some very good cartoons drawn by someone in the battalion showing the Jocks and their officers making their early endeavours). For a time he was based at Crownhill Barracks/Fort at Plymouth one of the "Palmerston fortifications" which had been left uncompleted since the 1860s; some of the sons of the original masons were brought back to finish the buildings.
The battalion moved to Witley camp near Godalming, Surrey, where they were encamped under canvas on ground recently cleared by felling fir trees - hence there was a pleasant smell of pine to mitigate the hardships. He was then a Company Commander.
One night there was a zeppelin raid. The troops were roused and made to fall in with fixed bayonets; they had no ammunition and my father humourously wondered if they were supposed to climb a tree and try to puncture the intruder(s)! As the company was mustering, a stout Jock who had evidently been drinking, said to him in a fatherly way, "It's all right, Captain Mackie, "Ahm here". A Canadian battalion was also in the camp and the Scots were impressed by their friendliness although a little shocked at their familiarity. There was also a battalion of the Sussex Regiment who used to sing their song "We're the men from Sussex, Sussex by the sea .... "
One of his soldiers was dying of TB in a hospital at Hindhead and my father rode up on horseback to visit him. To his horror he found a stern, Canadian padre saying "Young man the time has come for you to repent of your sins ..." The soldier looked past the padre and caught the eye of my father who winked and shook his head to show his disagreement; the young man smiled in recognition. On his way back to camp he was riding round the rim of the Devil's Punchbowl when a large white owl flew up from the valley and remained silently some yards away on the left of my father for some distance. He knew that there was some mediaeval superstition about owls but could not remember what it was or whether it was better for it to be on the left or on the right.
In those days infantry officers had horses (and grooms) and horseback was the main way of getting about the countryside. The local pubs were the Crown at Chiddingfold and the White Hart at Witley (both still going strong). My father was proud of his horsemanship but very embarrassed when riding through the horsey village of Chiddingfold in company with a major who had very little idea of riding.
Life in the camp was pretty uncomfortable. Inevitably things tended to go missing; my father's batman put this all down to the "diners", the civilian workmen who were building some of the huts.
The battalion exercised by going on long route marches and they built a large entrenchment on Thursley common, My father was extremely conscientious and his papers include glowing testimonials from senior officers to the way in which his company was trained.
When the time came they went to France and had to endure the realities of trench warfare. He wrote a number of articles about some of his experiences and sent them to his father with a view to having them published after the war. A kind of self-imposed censorship prevented him from publishing them sooner, and by the time the war was over, there was no longer much interest in an infantry officer's reminiscences of the Western Front. These articles have been preserved and tell some of his experiences in his own thoughts and words. One of the most typical is how the inhabitants of a dug out tamed a mouse with honey and whisky and named him Adolphus!
He spoke often about the mud which seemed to be everywhere. It had its advantages, because shells and mortar bombs often failed to go off. He kept for years a German mortar bomb which landed right beside the plank causeway on which he was walking. If it had gone off he would have been killed and I would not be writing this. It is now doing duty as a doorstop.
Troops at the front became almost blase about shelling and mortar bombardment. Visiting senior officers were very rare and were not used to the casual way in which the front-line troops seemed hardly to duck when shells landed, but the mud which was then like porridge just absorbed them.
Snipers were another matter; you had to watch out for them. My father's best friend was killed, shot through the throat by a sniper, while peering over a parapet. Nobody understood why he did so at a dangerous spot.
One night the elderly colonel - after dining well - decided he would go out into "No Man's Land" to inspect a barrage that was being laid down by British gunners. He came back swiftly, sober, but minus his cap and stick.
The purpose of the trenches was to provide defensive cover from which the infantry could halt an enemy advance. It was also to provide a starting point from which to attack the enemy trenches on the other side of "No Man's Land". While the opposing lines ran from north to south, they were by no means straight and had to bend in accordance with the territory as well as the topography.
No Man's Land was the scene of many night patrols and raids, when small parties of "straffers", armed with entrenching tooehandles, went out to try to capture prisoners to gain intelligence.
Attacks on the enemy trenches were made after artillery bombardment to soften up the position and keep the enemy from manning the parapets. The trenches had large barbed wire entanglements in front of them which had to be cut. One of the effects of a bombardment was often to churn up the wire into such a state that it was more difficult than ever to cut. The kilt worn by Highland soldiers was most impractical. On one occasion, Duncan - in riding breeches - made his way through the wire and into the German front line long before his company were able to come to his support. Fortunately the Germans were already withdrawing and he had complete confidence that his men would come soon and that, particularly at close quarters, they were the beast in the world. He vividly remembered clearing enemy trenches; on one occasion a Jewish soldier startled him by jumping out of a niche to surrender and raised his arms in the "Kamerad" gesture with such zeal that he split his tunic at the armpit.
One method of clearing a path through the barbed wire was to use a Bangalore torpedo. This was a long tube filled with explosive which was pushed along the ground under the entanglement and then exploded. On one occasion the Bangalore torpedo, having been carefully placed, failed to explode. This left the assaulting infantry in a dreadfully exposed position and most of them were killed or wounded.
It was during one attack that my father was first wounded. (He has written his own account of it.) The attack had been going very well. The men had taken the first line of trenches and were moving on towards the second (or third) when a machine-gun on their right flank enfiladed them and shot many of them down, including my father who said everything seemed to be going very well when suddenly he felt as though he had been kicked by a horse! When he came to he was being removed on a stretcher. He said to the nearest officer "You must get that bloody machine-gun on the right". The message was duly passed on to the battalion headquarters who sent back a reply "Your message is not clear, refer to compass bearings". My father was furious, he had no way of taking a compass bearing; he did not know whether the lines were due north and south at this point. However, he then lost consciousness, but often recalled his disappointment "We'd been doing so well until I got hit."
He was full of praise for the hospital arrangements, except for the stealing. Everything he had with him, including his wrist watch was stolen. He was sent to a hospital at Rouen whence a telegram was sent to his parents stating that he had been admitted with "Gunshot wound - serious."
In the hospital an arrangement was made whereby water was dripped slowly and continuously right through his body to cleanse the wound. He never cleaned the blood off his revolver holster and it is still stained to this day.
After he recovered, Duncan rejoined the battalion which had then returned to England and was based at Devizes in Wiltshire. He wrote to his parents as follows:-
"Life is full of small surprises, Here we are in quiet Devizes. Won't it be a treat for Wilts, When we all appear in kilts".
It was in 1916 that he married in Edinburgh, Cicely Jean Paterson whom he had known well in St. Andrews where she had been the ward of the kindly Principal, Sir James Donaldson, a very distinguished Scottish scholar and philosopher, who had helped to foster their romance. He had died in office in 1915 at the age of 84 and in spite of it being war time he had a very large ceremonial funeral, being buried in St. Andrews Cathedral. My parents did not address each other by their Christian names until after they became engaged.
The battalion was sent to Ireland soon after the 1916 rebellion for "Duties in aid of the Civil Power". Ireland fascinated and mystified him. When his company had been disembarked and formed up on the quay he gave the order "By the left, quick march .... and step slow in front!" Oh my God, he thought, Ireland is getting to me already.
They were stationed at the seaside town of Kinsale where his new wife Joined him. They had a charming landlady whose husband died while they were there. They were both shocked by the contrast of the kindness of the local doctor with the apparent brusqueness of the priest.
It was difficult to make much headway with the security situation; reprisals were out. It was very difficult to obtain any information about the Irish irregulars although their intelligence about the British Army's movements was absolute.
I believe that it was while they were at Kinsale that one of the foremost bandsmen was Victor Sylvester who later became the BBC's dance band (strict tempo) favourite.
The battalion had to go back to France and return to the business of trench warfare. This was often static for months with only small movements either way. Contrary to what is sometimes written and said nowadays, Duncan was emphatic that the morale of the troops remained high throughout and none of them ever doubted that they would win in the end. He was awarded the Military Cross for, as he put it, "running about and shouting."
The German offensive in 1918 shook the Allies who were forced to retreat; some went faster than others. A Portuguese unit stole or looted bicycles to speed them on their way. Then the Australians moved up to the front. Duncan, looking at their long, rather horse-like, confident faces, knew that there would be no more running away. He had great respect for the Australian infantry in action, but found them most trying allies. They were liable to steal one's cooking equipment or anything else that might be useful to them, and were equally likely to shoot anyone trying to reclaim the belongings they had taken.
On one occasion the Argylls were ordered to withdraw quickly from a well prepared defensive trench and to leave everything except their personal equipment. They could not understand the reason for this order, and Duncan was upset to see so much valuable equipment being left for the Germans. Although laden with accoutrements like a Christmas tree, he picked up a pair of good wire cutters in a leather case and kept them for many years.
It was in the autumn of 1918 that the British Army made its decisive advance in Flanders. On the wall of a building which had been used as billets by the Germans he found the following graffito which pleased him:
"Marmelade, Käse and Butter Ist das Deutschen Heldenfutter Aber viele möchten wir Etwas Schinken Wurst and Bier."
It was in one attack over open ground that the battalion suffered very heavily from the German artillery. Duncan saw a brick house receive a direct hit from a high explosive shell. He said that the result looked like a red sneeze and the house disappeared. Soon after that he was hit in the shoulder by a large fragment from an airburst shell. This must have nearly killed him As it was, his arm was permanently damaged, although the surgeons saved the limb by knotting a nerve - one of the earliest of such operations. The pain remained with him for the rest of his life.
It was before one of the large-scale attacks that the old soldier who had spoken to him on the night of the Zeppelin raid at Witley said "Awe and tell Winston Churchill he needna send ony o' they tanks. Ahm going o'er." He did not survive. A surprising number did survive and battalion reunion dinners were held in Glasgow and were well attended at least until the late 1950s. Major Duncan Mackie was the convenor and chairman of this dinner. On one occasion in the 1960s an elegant and handsome man approached him with a smile and asked if he remembered him. Duncan thought for a moment and then said "Oh yes, but the last time I saw you, you were hanging in the barbed wire with a great hole in your chest."
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