Jacob Hope PRIMMER

Jacob Hope Primmer came from Dunfermline, Fife, the second son of the Reverend Jacob Primmer and his wife Jessie of Kingseathill. His veterinary career took him from Scotland to New Zealand, where he served as a captain in the Veterinary Corps.

He was educated at Dunfermline High School. He qualified MRCVS from the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College in May 1906 with some distinction having been awarded the Harris Gold Medal for pathology and the silver medal for chemistry. He initially worked as an assistant to Mr John Aitken MRCVS at Chester-le-Street, County Durham, and established a successful practice in Dunfermline. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Territorial branch of the Army Veterinary Corps in March 1911 and was attached to the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry.

He spent some time in Germany before immigrating to New Zealand in March 1912 to take up a government appointment in Palmerston North. On the outbreak of war in August 1914, he immediately joined the New Zealand Veterinary Corps and was gazetted Captain. He set off in October 1914, along with the first New Zealand troops to leave for service overseas. He initially served in Egypt and later went to France, where he was attached to the New Zealand Field Artillery of the New Zealand Division.

On the 12th of June 1917, while the division was engaged in the Battle of Messines, he was struck by lightning and killed. A Gunner W. J. Wilson wrote of the incident to his father in a letter published by the Northern Advocate in September 1917:

The saddest affair I have ever witnessed happened not far from me the other day. A thunderstorm came on, and I was sitting in my tent out of the rain, when suddenly there was a terrific crack, far louder than the sound of any gun-firing or shell-bursting. We rushed outside, and saw that a tree had been struck by lightning about twenty feet from out tent. At the foot of the tree was a cookhouse, in which ten men of the 7th Battery had been sheltering from the rain. Our corporal was the first man to go in, and a sad spectacle confronted him. The whole ten men had been struck by lightning, and lay on the floor, some of them moaning. They were quickly taken out, and everything done to save them. One, Veterinary-Captain Primmer, had been killed, and most of the others were more or less injured. They were removed in motor ambulances, but I have not heard how they got on, although I believe some are all right. The veterinary surgeon was much liked and respected by us all, and his case was rendered particularly sad by the fact that his wife was in Paris expecting him to go and see her. The affair created a deep impression among us all, for it seemed strange that when the enemy’s efforts to kill had failed, Nature should take a hand in the business, with such tragic results.

Captain Primmer’s death was reported in The Veterinary Record on 23 June 1917. He is buried in Kandahar Farm Cemetery, Belgium.