Blog - Robert W. Mackay

HMCS OKANAGAN, HMCS RAINBOW–50 and counting!

July 25, 2018 by Robert Mackay 1 Comment

It’s been 50 years since HMCS OKANAGAN, the third of Canada’s O-boats, sailed from Gosport for workups. And in November this year, the Submarine Association of Canada (West) will celebrate the anniversary of her commissioning in the Chatham Dockyard.

The occasion, November 2-4, will also mark HMCS RAINBOW’S 50th. More about her in a later post.

OKANAGAN went on to an illustrious career in the RCN, most of her operations taking place in the Atlantic out of Halifax. Along with her sister boats, OJIBWA and ONONDAGA, her life was extended by a major update of periscopes, sonar, torpedo tubes, etc in the late 1980s that kept her operating until the late ’90s.

One of OKANAGAN’S last tasks was the search for and locating of the flight recorders of Swissair 111 which sadly crashed off Peggy’s Cove in 1998.

Many of her crew, now known as “The Crunch Bunch,” will no doubt reminisce about an unhappy day in 1973 when the OKANAGAN had a run-in with the propellers of Royal Fleet Auxiliary Grey Rover.

HMCS OKANAGAN was paid off in 1998, and sold for scrap. Both her sister O-boats, though, are museum pieces in Ontario and Quebec. They can be toured by the public, and will give an idea of life in what some have called “the last and best” of the O-boats.

Willoughbys at Moreuil, 100 Years Later

May 7, 2018 by Robert Mackay 2 Comments

The Saga of John Willoughby

On March 30^th, 2018, a dozen members of the Willoughby family gathered in northern France to mark, among other events, the death of their Great-uncle Jack, who died a hundred years earlier. John James Willoughby, former mounted policeman, was one of hundreds of casualties of the Battle of Moreuil Wood, but long after his death his presence was felt.

(Left: Constable Willoughby)

French farmer Jean Paul Brunel worked his fields as normal in 1986, preparing them for the spring planting. Like prairie farmers who deal with rocks heaved up by the frost every spring, Jean Paul kept an eye out for debris on the surface of the land—often unexploded munitions dating back a hundred years. From his tractor seat he saw something different—the remnants of a boot. And in that boot was a skeletal foot, with other bones still intact. With the body were various metallic objects: a bayonet, brass buttons, a shoulder badge that read LSH(RC)—and identity tags. Two of them, meaning the body had not received a proper burial. But the hitherto unremarked remains of John James Willoughby were the catalyst that a hundred years later saw hundreds of soldiers and civilians alike on the spot where he perished. (Below: Jean Paul at the location he found J J Willoughbys remains)

Jean Paul became an unofficial guardian of the memory of Jack Willoughby and the long-ago events of March 30^th, 1918. On that date Brigadier-general “Galloper Jack” Seely led the Canadian Cavalry Brigade into its fiercest fight of the Great War at Moreuil Wood. Seely set up his post at the spot where Willoughby’s body was found, and directed the Royal Canadian Dragoons, the Strathcona’s, and the Fort Garrys into the battle. Willoughby was a member of C Squadron of the Strathcona’s, led by Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew, late of Walhachin, British Columbia. (Below: “Galloper Jack”)

Flowerdew’s squadron was held in reserve when Seely committed the rest of the brigade to the fight in Moreuil Wood, eventually sending it around the south-east corner of the wood to engage what were anticipated to be Germans driven out by the Canadians. Flowerdew and his men were met with enemy rifles, machineguns, and artillery, but carried out a deadly charge. Roughly a third of the squadron were casualties, and Flowerdew himself died a day later.

Jack Willoughby may well have taken part in that charge. In any event, his body was buried, perhaps by an artillery shell, back where Seely had his headquarters, until it was discovered by Jean Paul Brunel sixty-eight years later.

Later research by a documentary film crew led the search for J J Willoughby’s descendants, if any. Researcher Judy Ruzylo turned up John James Willoughby, of Rocky Mountain House Alberta, J J’s great nephew.

In the meantime, Jean Paul Brunel was in closer contact over the years with the Strathcona’s. He would welcome descendants of the Moreuil Wood veterans, history buffs, and serving members when they sought out the site. A very dramatic moment occurred in 2008 when the younger John James Willoughby was introduced to Jean Paul, and escorted to a memorial set up by Jean Paul where he had discovered the remains of “Uncle Jack”. (Below: John Willoughby, at the memorial set up where his great uncle Jack’s body was located by M. Brunel)

Now an armoured regiment, Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians) has always celebrated Moreuil Day to commemorate March 30^th 1918. Twenty-eighteen was to be particularly noteworthy, being the 100^th anniversary of the battle. Jean Paul Brunel’s determined and focussed efforts in France, and those of the regiment, culminated this year. Hundreds attended the anniversary, highlighted by the presence of the LSH(RC) Mounted Troop, descendants of veterans of the battle, and French citizens. The extended Strathcona’s family, including no fewer than a dozen Willoughbys, joined General Seely’s family and the English branch of the Flowerdews, taking part in a tight schedule of events highlighted by the re-enactment of the charge of Flowerdew’s Squadron.

(Above: Willoughbys and friends, Moreuil Wood, 2018)

Moreuil Wood, and why it matters

March 4, 2018 by Robert Mackay 1 Comment

My newsletter, “Forces With History” #107 went out concurrently with this blog post. I’ve reproduced it below. The advantage of also publishing it as a post is that I can add the photos you see here:

Here is a shot looking eastward over the Avre River valley and the village of Moreuil toward the Wood on the ridge. At the left hand edge is the location Brigadier Seely galloped to set up his command for the battle.

Gordon Flowerdew, VC, who led “C” Squadron of the Strathcona’s and didn’t survive his wounds.

The piper on the right helped find a missing Lancaster plane with its airmen. He was very proud of this and had been to Toronto to meet the airman's family.

March 30th, 2008, at the north-west corner of Moreuil Wood. Frenchman Jean-Paul Brunel, centre right, set up a memorial after the remains of a LSH(RC) trooper were found on the site.

Then-sergeant Tom Mackay, who did survive Moreuil, with the author c 1963. (Note the horseshoe hanging by the door!) I’ll be making an emotional journey to Moreuil at the end of the month. To read Tom’s story, see Soldier of the Horse, available from me or on Amazon or your favourite bookstore.

Here is “The Battle of Moreuil Wood–Why Does It Matter?” taken from Forces With History. To receive FWH straight off the press, just drop me an email: bob.mackay@hotmail.com

The battle at Moreuil Wood, March 30^th 1918, and the subsequent engagement at Rifle Wood two days later, came to define the role played by the Canadian cavalry in the Great War. The preceding months and years in the trenches and out of them, and the cavalry’s role in the Hundred Days that followed Moreuil and Rifle Wood, were brutal and costly. But for sheer bloodiness and loss of life, and as well as for significance to the Allied war effort, those two engagements stand out.

Lieutenant S. H. Williams, author of Stand to Your Horses, was there for both battles. He observed that after Rifle Wood the Strathcona’s were down to 98 officers and men, out of their normal complement of 350. Counting the other two regiments, the Dragoons and the Garrys, they mustered fewer than 300 able-bodied men between them.

The German Operation Michael onslaught made it no further than Moreuil and Rifle Woods. In fact, both sites were hard-won by the Canadians and British in the two battles, but were again later occupied by the enemy. As Williams noted on August 8, at the commencement of the Battle of Amiens, the German line stood right where “…we had held them up on March 30 at Moreuil Wood and on April 1 at Rifle Wood.”

One part of the fight at Moreuil Wood captured the imagination of the public shortly after, and is about to be commemorated on March 30^th, this year, its centennial. The charge of Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew’s “C” Squadron, memorialized in a painting held in Ottawa, will be re-enacted by the Lord Strathcona’s Mounted Troop on that day. It will also be marked by dinners, lunches, and reunions all across Canada and in Europe. Courage shown by those troopers a hundred years ago continues to inspire Canadian troops today.

Cavalry will again gallop at Moreuil Wood

February 21, 2018 by Robert Mackay 3 Comments

March 30^th, 2018, will bring an amazing sight to the fields above the French village of Moreuil. A mounted troop in authentic World War One British cavalry uniforms will gallop, swords drawn, in a re-enactment of an event that occurred one hundred years before. The mounted men will be regular Canadian Army troopers of Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians). They, their Regiment, and guests will be welcomed by the village, whose collective memory includes the long-ago day when a bloody battle was fought to protect it.

On March 21^st, 1918, the German army unleashed a massive assault they called Operation Michael on the Allies. Seven thousand artillery pieces opened up, raining shells on the British and French lines. Eighteen divisions, over 200,000 men, swept through the gaps the artillery softened up, driving the Allies back and threatening to push the British into the sea. When the British slowed their advance, the Germans turned their attention to the approaches to Amiens in Picardy, in an effort to break through where the British and French armies met. Wherever they encountered tough pockets of defenders they simply swarmed past them, cutting them off and penetrating almost thirty miles past the previous front line.

Ironically the British cavalry, long derided as past its best-before date, now came into its own. Formerly in a reserve role, it was tasked with turning back the German onslaught. The Canadian Cavalry Brigade, operating as a unit of the British Army, found itself in the centre of the maelstrom.

Commanding the Canadians was Brigadier-general “Galloper Jack” Seely. A larger-than-life figure, Seely’s resumé reads like a tale from a Boy’s Own Magazine. Reserve cavalry officer, Boer War soldier, politician, cabinet minister, friend of Winston Churchill…Seely was an unlikely but popular leader of the Canadian cavalry, made up as it was of cowboys, plainsmen, remittance men and Mounties from the West, and Easterners of all stripes and occupations.

Seely first met the Canadians where they were training on Salisbury Plain when the British government, not sure what to do with a cabinet minister who insisted on going to war, and against the wishes of the Canadian government, assigned him to the brigade. Soon after, Seely and his command left their horses behind and crossed the Channel to join their infantry comrades who were struggling in the bloody, gas-filled trenches on the Continent.

The next few years saw the brigade often dismounted, half their number in the trenches for two weeks at a time, then rotating out to spend two weeks caring for and training with their horses—training for a cavalry attack through a “gap” opened by the artillery and infantry that never came.

March 21^st 1918 and Operation Michael found the brigade in Picardy. The British and French were staggered by the German onslaught. The highly mobile cavalry rushed from firefight to firefight, dealing with the attackers over a front that stretched forty miles.

In just one of many incidents, Lieutenant Fred Harvey of the Strathcona’s led a patrol that chased German attackers out of the village of Fontaine. Returning through the village, Harvey and his men encountered returning French troops, who imprisoned them as suspected spies. Luckily word of the affair reached Seely, who had them sprung. The embarrassed French awarded Harvey the Croix de Guerre.

In the nine hard days following the attack, the cavalry was stretched thin. Given the fluid nature of the battle and their mobile role, the troopers often outstripped the wagons of their supply line. Hungry and exhausted, they fought on.

On March 30^th, 1918, the Brigade was on the move from their bivouac on the banks of the Noyes River. Seely received orders to engage the enemy, who were busy a few miles away, occupying Moreuil Wood on the ridge east of the village of the same name. Galloper Jack lived up to his name, leading the Royal Canadian Dragoons, Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians), and Fort Garry Horse to the northeast corner of the Wood.

Attacking into the wood, first mounted and then on foot, the brigade found itself in a bloody struggle. Distant “friendly” artillery lobbed in heavy shells, and the Royal Flying Corps rained bombs on the wood, adding to the confusion.

Dispatched on a special task to cut off supposedly retreating Germans, Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew led the Strathcona’s “C” Squadron around the southeast corner of the wood—to be confronted by an enemy with rifles, machineguns, and artillery. Too late to turn back, Flowerdew ordered a charge. He and his men attacked at the gallop, swords levelled, in what one soldier later described as a stampede, not a charge.

Flowerdew was mortally wounded. Sergeant Tom Mackay, leading “C” squadron’s First Troop into battle, received “59 bullet holes on one leg, and there were more in the other one…”

A few of the squadron were able to swing into the woods to avoid the slaughter. Mackay and others survived, but lost many comrades.

It is there that, this March 30^th, one hundred years after the original battle, the Charge of Flowerdew’s Squadron will once again thunder over the Picardy hillside.

If you or someone you know would like a signed copy of Soldier of the Horse, my prize-winning novel based on my dad’s war, please email me at bob.mackay@hotmail.com.

Aaron Chapman–raconteur, musician, writer

June 18, 2017 by Robert Mackay Leave a Comment

This interview of Aaron Chapman was conducted in a secret location after months of negotiations with the wily subject. He’s a hard man to pin down, but an easy interview. He is currently scouting the battlefields of Europe.

RWM: What’s your date of birth, Aaron?

CENSORED. I hesitate to give that away in our information-sensitive, privacy concerned world—but I think it’s already out there. Let me say right now to Vladmir Putin and his computer hacker cronies at work in their dark arts—I’ll guarantee you my computer passwords are stronger than my damn birthdate.

RWM: Where?

Born and raised in Vancouver. People keep telling me that’s rare, I suppose it is.

RWM: Where did you go to school?

I attended Pt Grey Secondary High school, though Seth Rogen and Gil Bellows are probably more famous graduates that myself, I like to think they’d at least put me on the brochure… I was accepted to SFU and UVIC out of high school, but ours was a somewhat elitist family where they considered the local post secondary schools with almost an Oxford/Cambridge rivalry. Ours was a UBC family. My father, brother, cousins, had all gone there. And there was no way the family could see a Chapman going off to one of those other places. It’s not as snobby or elitist as it sounds (You can imagine the worst—the gossip around the dinner table amongst the relatives. ‘Did you hear young Chapman is off at UVIC?’, ‘Oh, yes… Dreadful. Do they even have running water out there?’) I ended up going to Langara for a year where I studied Medieval History and Religious studies, which boosted my somewhat respectable but not sufficient class-clown High School grade point average up over the bar to acceptance at UBC, and did my BA there, graduating in 1995.

RWM: Tell me about your musical career.

I took off on tour almost immediately after finishing University. I was in band called the Real McKenzies then—sort of a Scottish version of the Sex Pistols. With kilts and bagpipes, but leather jackets and electric guitars too. A wonderfully exciting and funny band. It was a bit like running away at the circus at a rather early age, but I began to see a fair bit of the world from it, and the adventure of it was mostly what i was looking for I suppose. I left by the late 90s, but the band is still going today. Later played with a Irish folk-rock group called The Town Pants that toured through Europe and North America, especially back east quite a bit, and also another band for awhile called Bocephus King. Plus I used to sit in a fair bit with some other well known local pals from The Hard Rock Miners to the Be Good Tanya’s. I was surprised to learn when I researched the Commodore Ballroom book, I’d played there 25 times with one band over another over the years. I took a bit of a step back from all the madcap touring when some of the writing began to take off I suppose.

RWM: How/why did you get into writing?

I remember thinking around 16 or 17 that I at least considered becoming a writer because I was interested in telling stories. I was very interested in Film as well and I studied that in University. There were a lot of books in the house I grew up in and there was a fairly understood notion that books were important.

My mother was the writer of a novel, an abstract art book and a legal textbook in her time. As a kid, I certainly watched her as she worked. My father was a lover of language and vocabulary, including a few four letter ones when I forgot to take out the garbage. So it was a good home to grow up in. But I also grew up next door to Canadian poet and novelist George Bowering. My bedroom window looked straight over to his writing office. At night, I could see him seated at his desk, typing away. I wish I could tell you I watched him say “Eureka!” or had music blaring while he wrong that somehow helped feed the muse, but there was no such moment. Mostly I remember looking out the window and seeking typing away there. Stopping for a bit, starting again. So watching other writers around me work I think even helped me to understand the mechanics of what it took. What Mark Twain referred to as “the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair”. There were people around me writing all the time. I thought it was perfectly natural there was a writer in every house…

I began writing some cover story pieces for the Vancouver Courier in the early 2000s, and though I didn’t study journalism in school, the articles were well received. I did a story about Howard Hughes’ six month stay at the Bayshore in 1972, the legendary concerts that were staged at the Kerrisdale Arena in the early 1980s, about the closing of an infamous Vancouver watering hole called the Sidebar Lounge, and began to develop a little column called Backstage Past that delved into some previous unpublished stories about the entertainment history of Vancouver. They were all local history pieces in away, and that interest in local history was partly fuelled by seeing the city I’d grown up in change so much so quickly. But writing also seems enjoyable because it didn’t involve soundchecks and travelling around the country with a band—it was something you could do on your own.

Film requires special technology to make it, and show it. Music requires an audience for people to see and hear you play it—but something you’ve written can travel quicker than you can, and if you don’t like it, you can rip it up and start it again. Some of these other arts required the aid of others or money for you to practice it. But with writing, you’re ultimately in charge of every department to tell your story. You’re the Producer, Director, and sometimes even the lead actor in your story. Not to mention the costumer, music scorer, lighting director, and soundman because all those elements in a film you control in the writing, and the descriptions within your story—even to a degree writing non-fiction which must ring true to what originally happened, and your writing evoke the right notes.

But jumping back, some of the articles I had done became jumping off points to books. If an article I had written really seemed to garner some interest or got a lot of feedback, I’d think to myself—there might be an opportunity to tell a longer story, so in a couple of cases the books I’ve written are a direct cause of that, and I suppose I got a little lucky that way. Arsenal Pulp Press took a chance on me when I met them in 2012, and they’ve published all my books so far.

RWM: Current projects?

Currently working on a new & revised edition of my 2012 book “Liquor, Lust, and The Law” (see below). At this moment I’m in Belgium and France on a tour of World War I battlefields with Sir Max Hastings, who is a British military historian of some renown, and he published a great book called “Catastrophe” about the beginning of the war. I’d followed some of his writing when he was a war correspondent, and his book on the Falkland Islands war was very good, so I’m looking forward to meeting and travelling with him on this trip where he does some lectures at the former trenches and cemeteries. I’m also travelling to Austria and back up to the UK where I’m doing some research on a book idea too, as well as hopefully take in a few concerts and a few good single-malts—whichever comes first. There’s an album of music I really want to finish soon too, maybe by the end of the year. I’d love to tell you that my writing keeps all the bills and staff (my two cats) paid at Stately Chapman Manor, but I do some voice over work in film and TV, particularly on some cartoons recently which has been really great fun too. I do a little bit of work on the side as a production manager in the local concert business, all of which helps to keep the lights on. In this town, you better learn how to swim.

RWM: You write for the Courier–how’s that going? Fun, lucrative? (we always hope, eh?)

The Vancouver Courier is great, great local coverage of things. I just met with the editor and we talked about some new articles I’d do for them, that frankly I’m now late in delivering. But the Penthouse book revision has taken up a bit of time. Once I get this done I keep thinking how it might be a good idea if I pitch them on doing at least a monthly column or more, as they seem to like my stuff, and the things I write about seems to be a good fit for the paper. And the newspaper has been a great seedling ground, as some of the stories I’ve written for the paper later grew into a book idea.

RWM: How are Liquor, Lust, and the Law; Live at the Commodore; and Last Gang doing?

Great. Live at the Commodore won the BC Book Prize for 2015. My latest book The Last Gang in Town was shortlisted this year for the same prize, and it’s on it’s second printing, and really seems to have found an audience not just from those who remember what the city, and what East Vancouver was like back then, but also to younger readers, or new residents who’ve just moved there who wants to find out what the neighbourhood was like back then, and what the truth was with those East Van street gangs. So I’m very happy to hear from readers and those who have come out to some of the subsequent talks I’ve given about the book, and they confirm what I had in the book, or tell their own anecdote about some of the police or gangs they knew back then. Right now, I’ve turned some attention to my first book about the Penthouse Nightclub. The book is going its third printing, and because it’s the 70th anniversary of the Penthouse, we’re going to do a new, revised edition, adding more photos and stories, and some additional content. It feels a little strange at time to go back and have the chance to update earlier work you’ve done, as the opportunity isn’t always around to do it—it feels a little like getting a chance to take your class photo when you were a student. But when you write on local history, inevitably people come out of the woodwork no matter how well you’ve researched things, or how great your access was, to tell you a story or a rich little anecdote that would have been wonderful to include had you known it. So the nice thing is I’m getting a chance to add some of that stuff in, or because of the popularity of the original book we have the chance to take some of that stuff that ended up “on the cutting room floor”, to now include in this new & revised edition that’s coming out in the fall of 2017.

RWM: What do you like to read?

I read a very mixed bag of stuff. Anybody that would see my bookshelves would probably think three or four different people owned it, but I suppose everybody is a bit like that, aren’t they? I certainly read a lot of local history, and BC history, I’ve been reading some military history, some Australian history I’ve been meaning to get to. Plus a fair bit of music books of everything from Ian Dury to Tom Waits. There’s some true crime in there—probably as a result of working on The Last Gang in Town, but when I think about it I remember reading that stuff in my teens as well! Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde Murder mysteries books are great fun, and Brandreth has become a pen pal. Jerzy Kosinski is still interesting to me—though I suppose he’s fallen out of fashion for most. I’ve certainly got all that William S. Burroughs, Hunter Thompson, Philip K. Dick and others that a lot of lads my age would have grown up with. Robert Young Pelton’s travel writing is most enjoyable.

RWM: Hobbies? Sports?

I played soccer quite a bit as a kid. I’ve had a hankering to play Cricket ever since I had an Australian friend explain the game to me that it made sense, and I could watch it knowing what’s going on. It seems like a wonderfully old world game, and I suppose the historian in me likes it.

RWM: What part of Vancouver do you live in?

I grew up in Kerrisdale, but after school I bummed and bounced around nearly in every quadrant of the city renting a room here and there. I currently down between the East End of False Creek and Chinatown. It’s a good central spot and easy to get around. I used to live up on Commercial Drive where I couldn’t walk two blocks without feeling like the King of Kensington—because I knew so many people who lived around there and bumped into them, but this area which used to be all industrial is just being developed. The street I live on didn’t exist until 2006, so it’s been interesting to watch things grow. It feels very much on the border of the upwardly mobile Yaletown area, and the still-troubled downtown east side. There’s nice cars parked out front, but there was a murder across the alleyway the month I moved in. On one end of the street you see pony-tailed young women jogging off to their yoga classes, and at the other end of the street you see a binner pushing a shopping cart full of empties and scrap metal—so it’s just how I like it, right in the middle of it.

RWM: Anything you’d like to add?

Do buy one of my books. If you don’t like it, please return the unused portion and bill of sale to me for a full refund, or at least another one of my books you might like instead.

RWM comment: “unused portion?” That slipped past me. All kidding aside, Aaron’s books are a great read. Just as much fun as interviewing him.

Veteran of the Murmansk Run 97 today

April 22, 2017 by Robert Mackay Leave a Comment

Peter Lynch is turning 97. The photo was taken at a small gathering in the wardroom of HMCS DISCOVERY, Vancouver’s Reserve Naval Division, where Peter was presented with a cake by David Reece of the Naval Officers Association of BC following the Association’s AGM.

When World War II’s war against Germany wrapped up, Peter was serving in HMCS MATAME on the deadly Murmansk Run. MATAME then helped escort 15 surrendered U-boats into Scottish ports.

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