Brothers’ new names offer scant protection
ACANADIAN soldier called McDonald was in camp in England in 1915 waiting to be sent to the front in France. He was reading a newspaper and noticed a long list of New Zealand casualties from the Dardanelles. He leaned forward and read each name carefully. He knew some of them.
He saw the name H. Fairbairn as having died of wounds. It was a hammer blow to the Canadian soldier because he, too, was a Fairbairn.
Colin Fairbairn of Anderson’s Bay, Dunedin. He was not a McDonald at all. That was a fiction.
He took up a pen and wrote to the War Office in London and asked if it was his brother Hunter. He then wrote to his father James in Dunedin: ‘‘By Jove I hope it is not old Hunter. But I suppose if anything happens to him you ones will hear long before I will.’’
It was true. Hunter Fairbairn, Colin’s younger brother, had died of wounds while being taken to hospital in Egypt.
Colin then wrote to his sister Amelia, known in the family as Milly, in Dunedin: ‘‘Wasn’t it too bad about poor Hunter getting killed. I would sooner it had been me than him any time. I bet poor father is cut up about it badly . . . I am almost sure it will be my turn next as there is only a few men left out of the original first contingent of Canadians that is not killed or wounded.’’
The premonition was accurate. Not too long after that and within days of arriving in France in September 1915, Colin Fairbairn was killed, the first of his battalion to die.
A Canadian chaplain, Cecil Owen, wrote to James Fairbairn in Dunedin: ‘‘You have, I can assure you, the sympathy of the officers and men of the 29th Battalion who knew your son. He is well spoken of by all our men and [they] have only been in the trenches a few days and B Company, they tell me, had the honor of being given what was looked upon as the most difficult place to hold because [it was] nearest to the enemy.’’
Colin Fairbairn knew very well what he volunteered to do. As he wrote to Milly: ‘‘By what the hundreds of wounded soldiers that return here daily say, it must be a terror. There are some that have been wounded three times and go back for a fourth lot. Nobody but the people in England has any idea what a frightful state this country really is in. There is hardly a family in the whole of England and Scotland that has not had some of their family gone to the war. About half the people you meet are dressed in mourning.’’
The Fairbairn story had mystery added to the alltoofamiliar pathos of a family at war. It came to light publicly a few years ago when, in researching and correcting names on the Soldiers’ Memorial on Otago Peninsula, it became apparent that war records did not acknowledge the death of Colin Albert Fairbairn.
It was only through guesswork that I came up with the name McDonald (being a common Dunedin surname and, in fact, my mother’s maiden name) and once I found what I thought was the right man in Canadian records, it just remained to crosscheck with a birthdate and place. All matched.
Since then, a New Zealandborn descendant who lives in Canada, Margaret Stewart, has filled in gaps and provided copies of letters written from Egypt by Hunter Fairbairn, and from England by Colin Fairbairn (McDonald). She has deposited the letters with Toitu Otago Settlers Museum.
Another Fairbairn brother, Hedley, first dreamed up the McDonald fiction. He was married in Dunedin and his wife had a child but sometime between the death of his mother, Amelia, in 1910, and the start of the war, he went to Canada, leaving his wife and baby son on their own.
He chose the name McDonald by which to lead his new life and settled down as a farmer in British Columbia. He, too, served in the war and survived the significant Canadian battle at Vimy Ridge (as part of the wider Battle of Arras) in 1917. He returned to Canada and when he died in 1956, aged 74, the local paper described him as a dairy pioneer.
Colin Fairbairn, the seventh of Amelia and James Fairbairn’s 12 children, had a minor skirmish or two with the law, which the family believes may have been the reason for him following his older brother to Canada.
He had been with a mounted rifles volunteer unit in Dunedin and when he arrived in Canada, joined the Canadian Mounted Rifles until the start of the war when he joined what was initially known as the Canadian OverSeas Expeditionary Force.
Though the Fairbairn brothers chose their new lives, they remained homesick for the old ones. Sister
Milly sent Colin, when he was in camp in England, a copy of the Otago Witness, the weekly paper the Otago Daily Times produced mainly for country readers.
‘‘I don’t know how much to thank you for it,’’ he replied. ‘‘It just put me in mind of home to get a read of the Witness. I don’t think there was anything I would like better than to see the Witness.’’
Older brother Hedley, who arrived in France with his Canadian battalion after Colin had been killed, wrote to his father about the ‘‘terrible fighting’’ in the spring (that would have included Vimy Ridge) and remarked that the New Zealand and Australian soldiers were doing very well. ‘‘I have never met any Dunedin men yet out here, although I have met a lot of New Zealanders. I was dreaming that I was at home again last night and was with you and Jim [James Rough Fairbairn, another brother] but I am sorry that the dream was not true. I would give something to be back in old New Zealand again.’’
Ron Palenski acknowledges the assistance of Margaret Stewart in Abbotsford, British Columbia; and Sean Brosnahan, of Toitu Otago Settlers Museum.