THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER AN INTERVIEW WITH DR ALASTAIR MACKENZIE (LIEUTENANT COLONEL, RETD.)
Soldiers have been deployed to conflicts across the world across the centuries and many have fought in several wars during their service. Most remain tied to one army for their careers but Alastair MacKenzie chose a different path. Now a retired lieutenant colonel, MacKenzie was commissioned into the New Zealand Army in the 1960s but went on to fight for Britain, South Africa and Oman, including in the British Parachute Regiment and SAS.
A veteran of several conflicts, MacKenzie is one of the few men to have fought at the sharp end of both the Vietnam War and the Troubles of Northern Ireland. The following is his unique story of brutal combat, covert operations and the complex realities of modern warfare.
Officer training
“THE PRIVATE SOLDIER TRAINING WAS TOUGH BUT THE GOOD THING WAS THAT LATER ON YOU COULD SEE TWO SIDES OF EVERY DECISION THAT WAS MADE”
Born to a Scottish family in Britain in 1948, MacKenzie’s father was also a career soldier and WWII veteran. After many global postings, the family eventually settled in New Zealand but despite his father’s experience MacKenzie initially considered a different career to soldiering, “Interestingly enough, I wanted to be a veterinary surgeon. I didn’t get the funds to go to university at the time but I’d been heavily involved in school cadets at Wellington College so that path seemed to beckon.”
MacKenzie enlisted in the New Zealand Army in 1966 and served as a private soldier for a year in order to be selected as an officer. He recalls that this was a useful time, “The private soldier training was tough but the good thing was that later on you could see two sides of every decision that was made. Once you’d been at the bottom of the pile and had decisions made for you, I had a fair idea of what decisions were as an officer.”
His training was also dangerous and he was almost killed while patrolling on a rubber plantation in Malaya, “We were travelling at night and I suddenly fell into the earth. Luckily, my rifle was across my chest and that blocked me from dropping about 20 feet. I was pulled out of the hole and
