Jamie Mackay: The Country host with his Armistice Day story about a Southland farmer

Today marks the 107th anniversary of Armistice Day, which marked the end of World War I on November 11 in 1918.

Kiwis all over the country gathered to pay tribute and pass down stories from the event.

The Country's Jamie Mackay also has one, and he shared it today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right now we have Jamie McKay, Host of the Country.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey, Jamie, good I head you've.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Got an Armisters Day story for us.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Yeah, about a Southland farmer. I thought I better have
a rural link in this rural slot on your high
rating show. It's about a Southland farmer who was an
Otago mounted rifle and he was wounded twice at Gallipoli,
evacuated to Egypt, got back and participated in the rearguard
action on the last night of the evacuation from Gallipoli,

(00:28):
went back to Egypt, got transferred to the Western Front
in nineteen sixteen. That's the equivalent of a deadly World
War One cornella. At the Battle of Messines in June
nineteen seventeen, a prelude to Passiondale, New Zealand, suffered three
thy seven hundred casualties. On the day before the big attack.
He badly sprained his ankle evading shell fire laced with

(00:50):
poisonous scars. His breathing deteriorated. He was listed as dangerously
ill with pneumonia. He was shipped to a hospital near Southampton,
whereas conditioned worsened, and later years he recounted the story
of being in an overcrowded, unsupervised war, and for reasons unknown,
being denied water. Severely dehydrated and in a state of delirium,

(01:13):
he refused to give in, and in the middle of
the night he climbed down from his bed, crawled to
a bucket of filthy mop walk at water which had
been left in the ward, and he drank it. He
always maintained that water saved his life. Like other soldiers
disenchanted by the horror of verse of the First World War,
he became something of a pacifist, drank heavily in the

(01:34):
company of his army cobbers, and spent a lifetime be
deviled by nightmares. He smoked a tobacco pipe until the
last week of his life. His nurses at the hospital
and in Chicago had to pry it from his hand,
and he died of pneumonia, aged eighty in June nineteen seventy.
He was Hugh McKay, my grandfather and Barry's grandfather. What

(01:58):
a great story.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
And as it turns out, my children's great grandfather. Hey,
thank you very much, thank you, Jamie. I appreciate it's
a lovely young that's Jamie mackay. Hosts The Country Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
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