Col. McKenzie

A senior officer, picked up on the way to look over new billets at Gouves, July 13, 1918, and again twelve days later under the nickname "Col. Mack" (July 25). Resurfaces nearly three months on, October 19, during the rapid advance toward Douai, handing Robertson orders to report to Brigade: the same register of senior, directional authority as the July mentions, and no competing "McKenzie" in the intervening months, which together read as good continuity for the same man. Distinct from the long-running fellow officer Mackenzie / McKenzie / Mack: going from an unranked junior officer as late as December 1917 to a full Colonel within seven months is a far bigger jump than the diary otherwise supports, and a second, unrelated officer sharing a common Scottish surname is the more likely reading. Robertson's own kept papers point to a name and an appointment for him. The 1st Brigade, Canadian Engineers operation orders and instructions he filed in August and September 1918 (the move south to Amiens, the engineer plan for the Battle of Amiens itself ("Roads, Bridges and Tracks"), and the engineer plan for the Canal du Nord) are signed by Lieutenant-Colonel J. P. Mackenzie, Brigade Major, 1st Brigade, C.E.: a Lieutenant-Colonel Mackenzie in exactly the role of allotting billets and passing on orders to report, at exactly this date. “Colonel” for a Lieutenant-Colonel is the ordinary diary shorthand, and the match is close enough that the two are almost certainly the same man, though the diary never gives his initials or his post. (On 21–23 September the same orders are signed by an acting Brigade Major, a Captain, whose signature is illegible: Mackenzie was briefly away.) By October he is signing as the brigade's acting commanding officer: the 1st Brigade's orders of October 9 and 10, 1918, in the 3rd Battalion, C.E. war diary, are signed "J. P. Mackenzie, Lieut.-Colonel, A/O.C., 1st Brigade, C.E.", while Captain F. J. O'Leary signs as acting Brigade Major on October 8. That is the register of the October 19 entry, in which he hands Robertson "orders to come to Bde."

One earlier diary sighting fits the same man. On April 11, 1917, as Robertson's unit was turned out of its billets, "Maj. McKenzie 8th Bn" moved in, and J. P. Mackenzie was a major in the 8th Canadian Infantry Battalion that spring, awarded a bar to his D.S.O. for his handling of the battalion in the attack at Arleux seventeen days later, before he transferred to the Engineers in the 1918 reorganisation and, ultimately, rose to major-general.