Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share DZ Season 013 Part 04 ANZAC Day Fighting Mac (William McKenzie). The first ANZAC Day - the day of the landings.
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
DZ Season 013 Part 04 ANZAC Day Fighting Mac (William McKenzie). The first ANZAC Day - the day of the landings.
You’d have to be a right bugger to have a go at the Australian Army chaplains in World War I. Why? Well listen to this story of one of them – and he’s not even the chaplain that was a legend to the ANZACs. This is another one.
Chaplains weren’t supposed to have been landed with the first troops at Gallipoli, but somehow one was. He didn’t get that memo. He was Roman Catholic chaplain, Father John Fahey of the 11th Battalion from Western Australia. He was a man of God so it would be a bit rough to accuse him of lying about that memo.
Father Fahey was a tough and practical man, much like the man that these programmes are about, our Fighting Mac. Father Fahey had come from preaching to the hard men in the rough timber settlements and mining towns in Western Australia. He was no wimp.
He landed with the first ANZACs at 4:30 am on the morning of 25 April. His battalion landed on the northern end of the beach, looked down on by Ari Burnu. It came into what was probably the heaviest fire and probably suffered the worst casualties of all of the Australian battalions to be landed that day.
Father Fahey saw men killed to the left and the right of him. His coat, haversack, waterproof sheet and tobacco tin were all riddled with shrapnel and bullets in a series of separate incidents, the one after the other. A book was shot out of his hand, it could have been, most likely was, the Bible. A tin of jam was perforated by bullets and shrapnel as he ate from it. He was half buried by shells – not once but twice. This all happened in the first three weeks that he was ashore.
So now we come to where the enormous legend of Fighting Mac really begins – and it’s a story that has been tragically forgotten in this country today. That’s something I want to put right in this and my following programmes.
God Bless the Salvos - the Salvation Army.
Tag words: William McKenzie; Fighting Mac; Australian Army chaplains; World War I; ANZACs; Gallipoli; Roman Catholic chaplain; Father John Fahey; Ari Burnu; the Bible; Colonel MacLaurin; Salvation Army Commissioner Hay; Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson; Christian funeral service; Lone Pine; C.E.W. Bean; kangaroo shoot; Corporal Alfred Mower; evangelistical gatherings; snipers; Lieutenant-Colonel Le Maistre; Brigadier-General John Forsyth; Jesu, Lover of my soul;
View all episodes
By Paul FordyceYou’d have to be a right bugger to have a go at the Australian Army chaplains in World War I. Why? Well listen to this story of one of them – and he’s not even the chaplain that was a legend to the ANZACs. This is another one.
Chaplains weren’t supposed to have been landed with the first troops at Gallipoli, but somehow one was. He didn’t get that memo. He was Roman Catholic chaplain, Father John Fahey of the 11th Battalion from Western Australia. He was a man of God so it would be a bit rough to accuse him of lying about that memo.
Father Fahey was a tough and practical man, much like the man that these programmes are about, our Fighting Mac. Father Fahey had come from preaching to the hard men in the rough timber settlements and mining towns in Western Australia. He was no wimp.
He landed with the first ANZACs at 4:30 am on the morning of 25 April. His battalion landed on the northern end of the beach, looked down on by Ari Burnu. It came into what was probably the heaviest fire and probably suffered the worst casualties of all of the Australian battalions to be landed that day.
Father Fahey saw men killed to the left and the right of him. His coat, haversack, waterproof sheet and tobacco tin were all riddled with shrapnel and bullets in a series of separate incidents, the one after the other. A book was shot out of his hand, it could have been, most likely was, the Bible. A tin of jam was perforated by bullets and shrapnel as he ate from it. He was half buried by shells – not once but twice. This all happened in the first three weeks that he was ashore.
So now we come to where the enormous legend of Fighting Mac really begins – and it’s a story that has been tragically forgotten in this country today. That’s something I want to put right in this and my following programmes.
God Bless the Salvos - the Salvation Army.
Tag words: William McKenzie; Fighting Mac; Australian Army chaplains; World War I; ANZACs; Gallipoli; Roman Catholic chaplain; Father John Fahey; Ari Burnu; the Bible; Colonel MacLaurin; Salvation Army Commissioner Hay; Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson; Christian funeral service; Lone Pine; C.E.W. Bean; kangaroo shoot; Corporal Alfred Mower; evangelistical gatherings; snipers; Lieutenant-Colonel Le Maistre; Brigadier-General John Forsyth; Jesu, Lover of my soul;