PRIVATE JOHN B MCKAY
CAMERON HIGHLANDERS
18TH AUGUST 1918 AGE 19
BURIED: DAINVILLE BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE
This is so sad - a father's farewell to his son ... "we shook his hand". Father, David McKay, was a steam engine fitter from Perth in Scotland and John was the youngest of his four children. Was John's mother, Mary, alive when John left for the war? I can't tell. Surely she would have kissed him. But perhaps they are talking of the last good-bye at the railway station when young John was probably desperate that no one should disgrace him by kissing him or crying. And, of course, the words may not be a literal description. There is an In Memoriam verse that uses some of these words and David McKay may simply have felt less exposed using these:
With aching hearts we shook his hand,
Tears glistened in our eyes,
We wished him well, but never thought
It was our last Goodbye.
There was another father who described his last farewell like this, "I could not speak that last last good-bye but kissed him o'er and o'er". This too is a headstone inscription, that of Private William Carr. But, for all its restraint, the pain is no less evident in John McKay's inscription than in William Carr's.
McKay served with the 6th Battalion the Cameron Highlanders. In July 1918 the battalion had formed part of the combined British, French and American attack at Buzany. At the beginning of August they were moved north again and took part in the final victorious hundred days. McKay and two other soldiers from the 6th battalion were killed on 18 August. They are all buried in a small cemetery at Dainville where they are the only Cameron Highlanders and where there were only twenty burials during the whole month of August 1918.