MACRAE, JAMIE

Jamie MacRae was the son of Dougald and Ena MacRae who in 1921 opened Linger Long Lodge.

Jamie MacRae

At the mid-point of August 1944 Jamie MacRae was part of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada as they battled their way towards Falaise.

John Macfie later wrote (Nov. 6, 1991):

“On August 13, 1944 Jamie wrote a letter to his mother which he dateline “in a slit trench somewhere in France”. He described the hot, dry dusty weather and terrain. …Towards the end of his letter Jamie turned to spiritual matters and drops a hint that one or other of his mother’s sons might not come home from the war.”

Operation ‘Tractable’ was launched to close the Falaise Gap. The Argylls were poised at the cutting edge.

At the operations launch, just one day after his brother died in Warsaw, Jamie was killed by enemy artillery fire, hit in the chest by a fragment of shell which struck tree branches overhead.

Above, a copy of a letter sent by Jamie and Dougie’s mother to Dougie after learning of the death of Jamie and learning that Dougie was ‘missing’.

In his book “Lots More Parry Sound Stories, Essays on Parry Sound District History” 2005, (pages 307-310) John Macfie recounts the story of Wojcech Dobrowolski, who, on the night Dougald MacRae died was a youthful insurgent manning barricades in the streets of Warsaw. As John recounts, Wojcech’s crowning moment was when he knocked the track off a German tank with a British-made PIAT gun. a weapon the Resistance probably obtained from the Allied air drops. The uprising failed and Wojcech became a prisoner of war. After his release he spent a brief period in the British Army and in 1952 immigrated to Canada. In one of those ironic twists of fate, Wojcech built a cottage on Wawashkesh Lake, the Lake on which Dougie MacRae grew up.