The date was March 25, 1903. The handsome soldier picked up a pistol, put it to his head and pulled the trigger. Major General Sir Hector Archibald MacDonald was dead by his own hand. Fighting Mac, the hero of many battles, had lost the last battle to the Army and political bureaucracy.
This great General has been honored in story and song in the century following his tragic death. He is reported to be the model for the soldier on the label of Camp Coffee.
The image one the left is the old style label and the on on the right is the modern label.
Hector MacDonald was born March 4, 1853 to William and Ann MacDonald on a farm near Dingwall, Ross-shire, Scotland. His father was a crofter and stonemason. Like many of his time, Hector MacDonald was a Gaelic speaker. He spent his early years as a barefoot boy working on the croft, or farm. When he was only fifteen years old, young Hector MacDonald was apprenticed to a fabric dealer where he became a clerk in a country store. When he was eighteen, he joined the Gordon Highlanders as a Private. A legend was about to be born.
A rifleman for the next eight years, his first opportunity to distinguish himself came in Afghanistan. During the Afghan campaign in 1879, he was with a small patrol who found themselves ambushed by about two thousand enemy troops. Although only an enlisted man of low rank, MacDonald took command of his comrades and led them in a brilliant bayonet charge that drove off the enemy. The charge against unbelievable odds not only saved MacDonald's patrol, but exposed a plot to kill his commanding officer and his staff. In recognition of his resourcefulness and bravery, the General offered MacDonald a choice of an officer’s commission or the Victoria Cross, which is the British equivalent of the Medal of Honor. MacDonald chose the officer's commission. His successes grew. Holding the rank of Colonel during the Sudan campaign, he again displayed uncommon bravery by beating back a Dervish charge upon the British flank, averting a disastrous defeat.
During the Boer War Hector MacDonald continued to distinguish himself with numerous victories and brilliant charges. It was during this time he acquired the nickname, "Fighting Mac," given by an admiring press and the troops under his command. For, you see, Hector MacDonald was a "soldier’s officer." A mustang officer, he had been an enlisted man himself and understood all too well the life his men led. They loved him because he respected them, unlike most of the upper class officers. His series of spectacular successes resulted in his promotion to Brigadier General. Queen Victoria awarded him a Knighthood.
The British military has always been class-sensitive, and there was resentment among other commanding officers who came from the upper social classes. The successes of this tenant farmer’s son provoked an almost unparalleled jealousy and envy, added to which was the prejudice felt by British officers for comrades who "smell of the barracks." It is said that MacDonald forfeited true happiness when he left the ranks and became an officer. Although a fierce warrior, he was a sensitive man and was aware of the criticism rankling in the hearts of his brother officers. Consider also that he was a veteran of many battlefields; he was given to spells of brooding, which undermined his health. He suffered from severe wounds and sun-stroke, and most likely, what we now call Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. It was not long before he became a nervous wreck. He was in this state when, after the Boer War, he was placed in command of the British army in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
Ceylon furnished MacDonald with an inactive and uninteresting military command. At the same time he was presented with temptations in the form of several young men who were interesting and sexually active. He ruffled more feathers by forcing the unkempt and ill-disciplined British troops, most of them sons of British planters, to show more spit and polish. He offended the Governor, Sir Joseph West Ridgeway, when he yelled at him to get off the parade ground during a drill. He declined the social invitations of the upper crust British community and instead spent time with local people.
Rumors began circulating that he was having a sexual relationship with the two teenage sons of a local businessman, and that he was patronizing a "dubious club" attended by British and Sinhalese youths. Matters came to a crisis when a tea-planter informed Ridgeway that he had surprised Sir Hector in a railway carriage with young men. Further allegations began coming in from other well-connected members of the colonial establishment. There was a threat of even more to come, involving up to almost a hundred witnesses who allegedly had witnessed homosexual activity. Governor Ridgeway told MacDonald to return to London, telling the General that his main concern was to avoid a massive scandal: "Some, indeed most, of his victims ... are the sons of the best-known men in the Colony, English and native", he wrote, noting that he had persuaded the local press to keep quiet in hopes that "no more mud" would be stirred up. One must also keep in mind that homosexuality or homosexual activity was not illegal in Ceylon at the time and even if the accusations were true, they were not illegal by local law and custom.
Upon his arrival home, Sir Hector was ordered by the Imperial Chief of Staff to return to Ceylon to face a court martial. This was ostensibly to "clear his name," but promised to be a kangaroo court to drum him out of the service in disgrace, thus getting rid of the ordinary soldier who had become an icon and hero to the empire, overshadowing his less capable or brave colleagues.
A few days later, a shot rang out in a Paris hotel room and Major General Sir Hector Archibald MacDonald was dead.
The aftermath was instant and unforeseen by the Government and the military establishment. The suicide of the war hero caused great public shock. For the Government, part of the shock was the discovery that MacDonald had a wife and a son. In 1884 when he was 31, he had married a girl of fifteen in secret. They had seen each other only four times in the subsequent nineteen years. Lady MacDonald died in 1911. MacDonald's son became an engineer and died in 1951.
In an attempt to cover things up, the government planned for the General’s funeral to be held in secret in Edinburgh. They rushed the effort to bring his body home quickly and bury him in near secrecy. Despite the Government effort to keep it a secret, the word got out. A staggering number of people turned out. A crowd of 30,000 people came to the funeral to pay their last respects. Over the next few weeks and months, thousands more from all over the world came to say farewell.
James Scott Skinner wrote a lament of almost unsurpassed beauty in his honor called Hector the Hero.
The poet, Robert W. Service, wrote a poem about him: Fighting Mac: A Life Tragedy.
Fighting Mac:
A Life Tragedy
A pistol shot rings round and round the world;
In pitiful defeat a warrior lies.
A last defiance to dark Death is hurled,
A last wild challenge shocks the sunlit skies.
Alone he falls, with wide, wan, woeful eyes:
Eyes that could smile at death -- could not face shame.
Alone, alone he paced his narrow room,
In the bright sunshine of that Paris day;
Saw in his thought the awful hand of doom;
Saw in his dream his glory pass away;
Tried in his heart, his weary heart, to pray:
"O God! who made me, give me strength to face
The spectre of this bitter, black disgrace."
* * * * *
The burn brawls darkly down the shaggy glen;
The bee-kissed heather blooms around the door;
He sees himself a barefoot boy again,
Bending o'er page of legendary lore.
He hears the pibroch, grips the red claymore,
Runs with the Fiery Cross, a clansman true,
Sworn kinsman of Rob Roy and Roderick Dhu.
Eating his heart out with a wild desire,
One day, behind his counter trim and neat,
He hears a sound that sets his brain afire --
The Highlanders are marching down the street.
Oh, how the pipes shrill out, the mad drums beat!
"On to the gates of Hell, my Gordons gay!"
He flings his hated yardstick away.
He sees the sullen pass, high-crowned with snow,
Where Afghans cower with eyes of gleaming hate.
He hurls himself against the hidden foe.
They try to rally -- ah, too late, too late!
Again, defenseless, with fierce eyes that wait
For death, he stands, like baited bull at bay,
And flouts the Boers, that mad Majuba day.
He sees again the murderous Soudan,
Blood-slaked and rapine-swept. He seems to stand
Upon the gory plain of Omdurman.
Then Magersfontein, and supreme command
Over his Highlanders. To shake his hand
A King is proud, and princes call him friend.
And glory crowns his life -- and now the end,
The awful end. His eyes are dark with doom;
He hears the shrapnel shrieking overhead;
He sees the ravaged ranks, the flame-stabbed gloom.
Oh, to have fallen! -- the battle-field his bed,
With Wauchope and his glorious brother-dead.
Why was he saved for this, for this? And now
He raises the revolver to his brow.
* * * * *
In many a Highland home, framed with rude art,
You'll find his portrait, rough-hewn, stern and square;
It's graven in the Fuyam fellah's heart;
The Ghurka reads it at his evening prayer;
The raw lands know it, where the fierce suns glare;
The Dervish fears it. Honor to his name
Who holds aloft the shield of England's fame.
Mourn for our hero, men of Northern race!*
We do not know his sin; we only know
His sword was keen. He laughed death in the face,
And struck, for Empire's sake, a giant blow.
His arm was strong. Ah! well they learnt, the foe
The echo of his deeds is ringing yet --
Will ring for aye. All else . . . let us forget
An imposing monument dedicated to Major General MacDonald stands more than a hundred feet tall in his home town of Dingwall, Scotland.
The case file was destroyed, allegedly as a precaution, immediately after his suicide. A Government commission released a report on the tragedy on 29 June 1903 that reeked of being a whitewash. The full truth of what happened will never be known.
Consequences and Cautions:
This is a cautionary tale. And how, you might ask, does this apply to our current times? First of all, while there was no DADT law on the books at the time, homosexual activity was frowned upon then just as it is now. He was facing a court martial that would get him drummed out of the service—does that sound familiar? While homosexuality was not a crime in Ceylon, nevertheless Sir Hector was probably facing time in the stockade if convicted. The King and Chief of Staff just wanted to be rid of him, and the King allegedly suggested that he kill himself. They wanted him dead, according to all the credible historical accounts. This is the ultimate in homophobia. Adding to the homophobic element was the resentment that this farmer's son, a Gaelic speaking man of humble beginnings, was able to outshine the traditional military men of the day.
And there is an additional cautionary note to this tale. The attempts to quell uprisings in Afghanistan did not work in the 19th Century. They did not work for the Soviet Union for the same reasons in the 20th Century. And it will not work in the 21st Century.
So, on the eve of our President signing the repeal of DADT, lift a glass to one of the greatest military heroes to ever don a uniform. A man who was also the victim of the same homophobia faced by Lt. Choi and so many others. Too many to name, some of whom are regulars to this site. Lift your glass and toast this great warrior who was driven to suicide by the powers of darkness. Slàinte Mhath, Mac. Rest in peace and Godspeed on your journey to forever.....