HIGHLAND SCOTTISCHE, life story of a Scottish soldier.

Highland Schottische

By Robert Grieve Black

1. BACK HOME

May 1945

The Western Highlands of Scotland.

The train skimmed round the edge of Loch Etive and pulled into the station at Connel. A soldier stepped onto the platform while another tossed his kit-bag out the window to him. He turned to wave, shout some goodbyes, and then moved out through the gate and into the street. He looked across Connel Bridge to his homeland and imagined once again the villages round the point, Benderloch, home of his bride to be, Barcaldine and its lovely forests, Appin where he had spent his childhood, the Lyn of Lorne cutting deep into the picturesque Highland landscape just as he had dreamed it so many times, and across to the island of Lismore, birthplace of his ancestors, behind in the distance the island of Mull. Land of legend, Campbells, Stewarts, MacDonalds, MacKenzies, Livingstones, Blacks; land of music and song; Highlands and Islands separated, yet joined, by loch and sea, a land to come home to.

This soldier was coming home and his mind was in turmoil. Nearly six years he’d been away. In front of him lay bushes of perfumed broom but in his nostrils still the stench of war, of death and dysentery. Emotions swirled. Drops of summer rain brushed his cheek and hid the tears. Love, hope, fear, joy, pain, deep longing and intense trepidation, a state of mind that would stay with him for many years. Like so many of his time this man was not really a soldier but a quiet, gentle man in warrior’s garb. He was a man who had turned his hand to many arts, shepherd, gardener, forester, carpenter and metalworker and could make and grow things with the skill of the artisan.

The rain had eased off now leaving a few puddles that reflected in the sun.

He turned again toward the bridge, the cantilever span of steel that carried the single-track rail line half a mile across the loch. He looked at the bridge and a shudder of fear ran down his spine.

His thoughts flipped back just days and weeks to Germany, the River Elbe. That last bridge was the worst, below the bridge flowed the river and above it flowed a river of human misery. An army on the run carrying with it thousands of prisoners, German soldiers’ wives and children, displaced people of all kinds. Plane after plane screamed down spitting out hellfire on friend and foe alike. Allied planes relentless in their path of destruction. Nowhere to hide: nowhere to run to. Just forward, run and dodge and hope and pray. Listen to the engine pitch and rattle of bullets and dive down flat just before it passes over; up again and run and listen for the next one. Step over the bodies. Keep one eye open for the tanks and trucks that crunch over fallen corpses and hapless souls that can’t move aside fast enough, images of carnage imprinted on the brain. There were many who didn’t get across that last bridge.

A motorbike was crossing from the other side of Connel Bridge, taking advantage of the space between the trains, its ill-tuned motor spluttering. It came off the bridge and its rider throttled back to take the downward curve more slowly. But the soldier didn’t hear this harmless sound. He heard instead a plane coming in, flying low. As the bike passed, the motor backfired. Gunfire! Get down! Instinct took over and down he went, face down on the street, face down in a puddle of water, his kit bag over his head and his body curled in foetal form.

As the sound of the bike faded away he picked himself up slowly, shaking from the remnants of fear and from anger at his own stupidity. The front of his sparkling new uniform was soaked. An old man came and helped him up while some young kids sniggered at the show.

“Don’t worry son. It’ll be all right” consoled the old Highlander.

But they both knew it wouldn’t be all right. The human body can endure extremes of abuse, of pain and suffering but the mind bears the scars. Shadows, images, ghosts will always be there. They don’t go away.

He picked up his bag and headed back into the station. The Benderloch train puffed in and he climbed aboard. A few minutes more and he would be home. The smile returned to his tortured face.

The soldier’s name was Ian Grieve Black. This is his story.

2. THERE IS A CITY BRIGHT

The North West of England, 1911

Barrow-in-Furness lies at the northwest corner of Morecambe Bay, a little north of Liverpool and south-west of Lake Windermere. It is sheltered from the Atlantic by the Isle of Walney, a long narrow strip of marshlands that absorbs the wrath of the sea. Between Walney and the town of Barrow is Barrow Island, a peninsula really but almost totally surrounded by water.

At the end of the 19th century this little corner of the British Empire became one of the most important shipbuilding yards in Europe. The company of Vickers occupied Barrow Island and converted it into docks. In the run-up to the First World War and in subsequent years it became the centre for the construction of submarines in Britain. They built a bridge across Walney Water and reclaimed some of the marshland to build Vickerstown, a handful of terraced streets built back-to-back. Ocean Road went from the new bridge across the small island to the seafront. They also built a school and with modern housing and with a pleasant seaside location, they attracted craftsmen from their competitors, from Glasgow, Belfast and Tyneside.

And here it was that Donald and Mary Black had set up home coming from Glasgow in search of a better life. First they lived in a small house in a neat little row called Jason Street but then the newer houses were built in Avon Street with bay-windows looking out across the marshes and with Donald’s promotion to foreman the Blacks moved into number 10. Both Mary and Donald were born in Argyllshire in Scotland in the village of Port Appin on the shores of Loch Linnhe, overlooking the beautiful island of Lismore. Mary’s father was the gardener in Drumneil Estate and Donald’s father was the carpenter and sawmiller. Donald came from a family of carpenters but became a blacksmith, learning his trade in the local smithy of Tynribbie. They married in Appin on the second day of January in 1896 and soon after they moved to Partick in Glasgow where Donald found work as an ironsmith in the shipyards of the Clyde.

When they moved south to Barrow their first two sons, Johnny and Bobby, were already born and then in 1903 came Donald and the youngest, Ian in 1906. Now the year was 1911 and Donald Black was heading home from the docks across the bridge. He was a hard man, a man of iron and steel who could handle hot metal and hot-headed men. He was now foreman of the angle-iron gang whose job it was to cut, form, weld and rivet the large angled sections of the outer shell of the submarines. He had learned the basics of his craft in the old blacksmith’s shop in Appin while his brothers, John, Dugald, Duncan and later Angus followed the family line as carpenters. Just the year before the father and sons had set up a joiner’s shop and sawmill in Appin. Making doors, windows and coffins was the routine of the day.

Dugald and Donald had been very close and there were many times when Donald missed his brother who, in his spare time, practised the gentler art of violin-making. He liked to make and play “the fiddle” as it is called in Scotland. Donald on the other hand was the man of iron.

And today Donald, like most hard men really soft at heart, was thinking of home in Port Appin and of his brother. As he walked along the road he was furtively concealing a piece of wood under his work jacket. Having crossed the bridge, he turned left along the Promenade of Vickerstown. The piece of wood had little real value but he had taken it from the yard and he knew that it could cost him his job and with it the house. Not a happy prospect but he knew that Dugald would like this wood. Mahogany, the best quality, it was an off-cut from the elegant stairways of the Mauritania. This wasn’t a Barrow-built ship; the Tyneside yard had won that contract, but some angle sections had been sent by rail to Donald and his team for cutting. Supporting the metal plates were some discarded pieces of carpentry and they had been lying around the yard for more than a year. Who was going to miss just one?

The Promenade divided, right up Ocean Drive or left along the waterside on Express Drive. Donald went left. A couple of streets more and then the drive curved round into Jason Street and then a few steps more took him to Avon Street. Between the two streets was a yard that served as washing green and playground. There were small vegetable gardens, pigeon lofts and greyhound kennels. Each house was nicely kept and there was an air of moderate prosperity. The shipyard was doing good trade. He knew that Mary would be waiting for him with the kettle on and little Ian, six years old, would no doubt be with her. Johnny, the eldest at 14 was now also working in the shipyard but he would have met some friends and would not show face until dinnertime. Bobby, in his last year of school, and Donald junior would be home soon when they had finished their game of football or whatever.

Donald, the father, thought himself lucky with a comfortable home and happy family but a frown crossed his face as he thought of Mary. She was never in the best of health. Maybe it had not been such a good idea taking her away from the shores of Port Appin, but she herself had been keen to taste life’s adventures. Donald Black was not a man of God but he found himself, sometimes, mouthing a silent prayer that Mary would be all right. Now into August the weather was good and Mary brighter with it. The evening sun shone warmly on Donald and he didn’t really need the jacket except to hide the piece of wood. It started to slip out from under the jacket as he neared the house and he quickly pulled it back up in case any nosy neighbour might see it. Young Ian met him in the doorway and followed him in.

“What’s that Father?” asked the lad.

“It’s a fiddle, son” replied Donald with a sly smile.

“Doesn’t look like a fiddle,” argued Ian.

“Some day, Ian lad, your Uncle Dugald will use that to make the most beautiful fiddle you have seen or heard,” he enjoyed teasing the boy whose curiosity was endless.

“Hmm” said the boy and skipped off to the scullery to his mother.

Donald laughed to himself. Not much of the mahogany would go into fiddles, perhaps just the support bridge or the fingerboard. Norwegian spruce or local sycamore made the finely shaped body of the violin. He would never have the patience. But anyway, Dugald would like the wood and spend many hours admiring it before doing anything with it. He went to the kitchen to look for his cup of tea.

Mary hadn’t felt too good that afternoon so she hadn’t gone to the shop. Now she needed potatoes so she gave “tuppence” to Ian and sent him for two pounds of Golden Wonders. Off he went, out the back door and through the yard. A minute later there was a gargled yell and he re-appeared at the door, crying, gasping for breath and clutching at his throat. Both mother and father went forward to see what had happened, Donald crouching down to hold his son.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It was Mrs McCafferty’s washing line,” answered the lad. “I ran into it.”

“Don’t be daft, Ian!” said his mother, “A washing line is high up. You would pass under it.”

With obvious difficulty Ian answered his mother. “But she has one between our coal bunker and their dog kennel.”

Mary could see what was coming. Her mad, Highlander husband leapt up and out the door. He ripped the washing and line off in one pull, tossed the bundle angrily against the neighbour’s door and stormed off down the street to the shop for the potatoes, still raging as he told the shopkeeper that he didn’t have any money, that she would get it tomorrow and the potatoes were too bloody expensive anyway. He had cooled off by the time he re-entered the kitchen. He put a comforting arm round both mother and child and then lifted a knife to start peeling the potatoes. He turned round, looked at them and they all started laughing. At that Donnie and Bobby came home and Ian, still fighting for breath, and laughing, insisted on telling them the whole story. With the potatoes starting to boil on the stove they all went through to the sitting room. Johnny came in and the story went another round, more graphic this time in the telling.

“Why is there a bit of wood on the table?” asked one of the older boys.

“It’s a fiddle,” laughed their mother, feeling better than she had all day.

Young Donald picked it up and started prancing around the room, playing the piece of wood like a fiddle.

“Put that down and go and help your mother in the scullery,” growled the father. The piece of wood went down immediately on the nearest chair and the older three scurried off followed by their mother, still laughing.

“Ian, take that and put it under the big bed,” ordered the father.

“But, how will you get it to Uncle Dugald?” queried the lad.

“Aye,” sighed the Highlander, rubbing his chin, “we’ll think of something.”

The boys set the table and brought through the “tea”. It’s strange how in the north of England dinner is called tea. It was boiled potatoes and the other half of yesterday’s meat stew. Mary offered the customary thanks to God while the “menfolk” waited impatiently to start. Over dinner the boys chattered about their uncle in Appin who made wonderful fiddles but whom only Johnny and Bobby had ever seen and Bobby couldn’t remember what he looked like.

The working week was Monday through to Saturday mid-day and the only holidays were Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year and a couple of days for the local fair. When they moved to the new house they had called in a photographer to take photos. They had stood proudly in front of the house and this photo had been printed as postcards to send to all the family. That was how people kept in touch in those days. Nobody had a camera except the professionals. Nobody had time to travel except sometimes for weddings and sadly most family reunions took place at funerals.

Later, with dinner finished and cleared away, Mary asked, “Ian, have you still got the tuppence?”

“Yes, Mammy.”

“Then off you go and pay Mrs Gullit for the potatoes.”

“But the shop’s closed now.”

“Well knock her door and tell her you’ve come to pay for the tatties. Now off you go.”

Ian went round to the shop to pay the dues to Mrs Gullit.

“A right temper has your Daddy. I don’t know what his trouble was,” complained the shopkeeper, who then took the lad to the back shop and gave him two cinnamon boilings, his favourite sweet.

Wandering back to the house he met Tommy McCafferty.

“Why did your Daddy throw our washing in the muck?” asked the young McCafferty.

“Because it nearly choked me. Look!” Ian displayed his wounded neck.

“What are you eating?”

“A cinnamon ball. Do you want one?”

“Yes please.” The sticky ball passed hand to hand.

“Do you want to come with me?” asked Tommy.

“Where are you going?”

“Down to Thorny Nook to look for wild raspberries.”

“I’ll have to tell my Mammy.”

“OK. I’ll wait.”

A few minutes later they were skipping along the road the best of friends, the clothes-line incident just a memory. They went down past the marshes passing through the tiny village of Biggar and on to Thorny Nook. There was lots of undergrowth and small bushes and nettles, which stung their legs, but they couldn’t find any rasps.

“My Daddy says you can make soup from nettles,” proclaimed Tommy.

“I don’t think I would like that. Does it not sting your tongue?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hey, look!” shouted Ian “There’s some,” as he spotted some red fruit growing round a small bush. The berries were bright red in little clusters.

“I’m not sure if they’re rasps,” said Tommy trying one, “but they taste good.”

Ian tried one then spat it out. It tasted bitter after the cinnamon sweet. Tommy had a few more then his eye caught the real thing, a bush of beautiful red raspberries. No mistake, these were the real thing and they both attacked the fruit with delight ignoring the scratches of the little thorns.

“Let’s go to Sandy Gap,” said Tommy, “and we can skim stones in the water.”

“OK. Race you!”

The two boys ran along the seaside track past the pavilion at the end of Ocean Drive and on to Sandy Gap, nearly two miles in all. The full length of the island had a stony beach line, flat black stones of all sizes. When the tide was out, there was one part like a sort of river bed where there was some sand, hence the name. But if you have ever skimmed stones you ought to know that Walney Island is the “Paradise” of stone-skimming. Big ones, small ones, millions upon millions of beautiful flat stones. Tommy’s went further but Ian managed more skips so they called it a draw and set off for home, dawdling this time, not so much of a hurry.

“Your Daddy speaks funny,” commented Tommy, “Is he Irish?”

“Don’t be daft. That’s your dad. My Daddy is from Port Appin.”

“But sometimes he speaks different, not English.”

“That’s Gaelic. My Mammy speaks that too when she doesn’t want us to know things but we usually understand. And she sings Gaelic songs to put me to sleep. They’re nice.”

Tommy wasn’t totally satisfied. “Where’s Port thingamee?”

“Port Appin? My Daddy says if you go into the sea and keep going you come to it but that’s by sea and really you have to go in the train and it takes a whole day and you have to change trains at Preston and in Glasgow.”

“Wow! That’s a long way. I think! Glasgow is a big city. I hate big cities,” decided Tommy with the pure uncluttered philosophy of a six-year-old.

“Aye, but Port Appin’s a lovely wee village by the sea and there’s an island like Walney called Lismore. My Mammy says that’s “island of flowers” in Gaelic and she sings a song about it but I don’t understand the words because it’s Gaelic.”

“But you said you understand.”

“Aye when she’s speaking about going out and things but not the song.”

“What else is in this place?”

“My grandpa, I think, but maybe he’s dead and my Uncle Dugald. He makes fiddles from bits of wood and my Daddy has…” Ian stopped mid-sentence realising that he was about to say something he shouldn’t. He had seen the wood hidden under the jacket so he decided that it was best left unfinished and quickly changed the subject. “I think I’ve got other uncles too and an Aunty. My Daddy says there’s otters and seals and you can sometimes see them playing in the water.”

“It sounds great,” decided Tommy, “Maybe we can go there some time and skim stones.”

“But we need money for the train and my Mammy won’t let me go. What about yours?”

“No, I suppose not,” conceded Tommy, “Have you ever been on a train?”

“No, but I’ve seen one at the shipyard. It was awful big. I was frightened.”

By now they were back at Jason Street and philosophy and world-travel gave way to thoughts of supper so they went their separate ways.

Next day, like always, Donald Black was up at six and with a packet of sandwiches in his pocket he set off on the two mile walk to the docks, across the bridge and turn right into the “island”. Maybe if they got this ship finished on time the bonus would be good and he might buy one of these new Sunbeam bicycles. Mary of course got up with Donald to make him tea and toast and then slip back to bed for an hour or so before she had to get the boys up for school. Johnny, as usual, was not as bright-eyed as his father and she had to push him out too before getting back to bed. Later as the two young ones clattered up the street in their “tackety” boots, Mary resolved to go and see the doctor. Best not put it off any longer.

The school was a red-roofed building, brick on the front and harled on the sides and looked like most of the houses, just bigger. It had two big doors with steps leading up. The boys went in the right and the girls in the left. The girls always got to go first but everybody had to line up, class by class when the headmaster rang the bell. Sometimes they had to stand like this for five, ten or even fifteen minutes while Mr. Arnold made announcements and read great tracts from the bible. With a couple of minutes to go before the bell Ian was hunting around for Tommy to continue the chat from the night before, fending off the inevitable “What happened to your neck?” from the other kids.

The bell started clanging and Ian went quickly into the line of Primary One. Tommy, a year older, would be in the next line but Ian dared not turn round. Old Arnold got “crabbit” when anybody turned round or spoke. “All eyes to the front and pay attention!” All the kids shuffled into place and Mr. Arnold cleared his throat to begin his spiel.

“This morning…” his voice boomed out across the playground, “This morning it is my sad duty to tell you that one of our school company has passed away.”

“Good!” thought Ian, “That’s old Mrs. Craddock in Primary 3. Now we won’t get her.”

“This morning at around three o’clock the Good Lord called his young son Tommy McCafferty…………..”

Ian never heard the rest. For a few moments his mind and body froze and then he vomited down the neck of the boy in front. There must be a mistake. It couldn’t be Tommy. But he knew that Mr. Arnold didn’t lie and he didn’t make mistakes.

Slowly the boy raised his hand in the air.

“Yes, boy!” roared Arnold, annoyed at this impudent interruption. “What’s the matter?”

Trembling but sure of his ground the boy asked, “Why did Tommy die, Mr. Arnold?”

“The family and the doctor are not sure. It seems he took stomach pains last night and died in delirium a few hours later.” Each word pounded in the little lad’s skull as he remembered the funny raspberries.

“Please, Mr. Arnold.”

“What now, boy?”

“Tommy ate some berries. I don’t think they were raspberries.”

“All right! Everybody to your classes! You, lad! Come with me!”

With the boys away to school Mary cleared up from breakfast, put on a jacket and headed for the doctor’s. She arrived to find a bigger queue than normal. As she walked in the doctor’s head popped round the surgery door.

“Mrs. Black. Come right in.”

Every head turned to glower at this queue jumper. Who did she think she was? Just because her husband was foreman!

Dr. Castleton ignored the communal hostile gaze and beckoned Mary into the surgery, not sure why she was getting such special treatment. Inside were Ian, Mr. Arnold and Mrs. McCafferty. Before she could ask “What’s happening?” Mr. Arnold barked.

“Continue lad!”

“We went to Thorny Nook and then we went to skim stones…”

“Never mind that! What about the berries?”

“We went to look for raspberries at Thorny Nook. We couldn’t find any then we saw some that were funny.”

“Describe them!”

“What?”

“What were they like?”

“They were red but not the same shape as rasps and they were growing round a bush.” Ian now knew for sure that they were not raspberries.

“Did you eat any?” the doctor asked.

“I tasted one but I spat it out because it tasted like medicine.”

“It sounds like honeysuckle,” said the doctor quietly.

“Yes,” whispered Arnold, “deadly nightshade,” not quite so abrasive as his usual tone.

“Mrs. Black,” the doctor said, “I would like Ian to take us to these berries, if that’s all right with you.”

“Yes. OK,” agreed Mary. “But why? Is Ian all right?”

“It’s little Tommy McCafferty,” replied Doctor Castleton, “He died last night.”

Mary felt the room swirl and she collapsed in a heap on the floor.

When she came round, Mrs. McCafferty was administering sips of water, herself still numb from the shock and the anguish and a full night without any sleep. After a few minutes the two women rose and walked out supporting each other as they walked home. Meanwhile the doctor, the headmaster and young Ian had gone off to the Nook in the doctor’s horse and trap. When they arrived there, Ian confirmed their suspicions. Tommy had eaten four little clusters of honeysuckle berries. One cluster would have been enough to cause heart palpitations. With four the young body had no defence.

Dr. Castleton would have to inform the police sergeant before making out the death certificate but first he dropped the headmaster off at the school. Arnold agreed that the doctor should take Ian home and this he did before calling in to inform and console the McCafferties.

By now Ian’s mind had settled firmly on his own guilt. It was he who had seen the berries and shouted to Tommy. Now he couldn’t even say sorry.

Joe McCafferty was a steam engine fitter from lower Belfast. He was Catholic. His wife Jenny was from a Protestant family. Walney Island at that time could boast only a Baptist church so convenience won out and that is where Tommy was taken for the burial service. It was brief and functional. Some of Joe’s fellow workers came from the shipyard in workaday clothes, the womenfolk a little smarter, all except poor Jenny who was still trying to get a grasp of what had happened and what was now taking place. There were no children there except Tommy’s four older brothers and two sisters and Ian who had pleaded with his mother to let him go, aware despite his tender age, that this would be his last chance to say goodbye to Tommy.

Once everyone had filed in the service started with a hymn.

There is a city bright.

Closed are its gates to sin.

Nought that defileth, nought that defileth,

Shall ever enter in.

As the fourth and last verse came to an end and the mourners sat down the Minister stepped forward beside the small casket.

“There is a city bright,” he repeated. “And the Good Lord in his infinite wisdom and greatness has called his young son, Thomas, to be at his side and to live with him in that wonderful city.”

“Oh, no!” thought Ian, “Tommy said he hates cities.”

But the Good Lord was like Mr. Arnold. He didn’t make mistakes. Tommy would be all right. Surely there would be at least a river where he could skim stones. Lost in his remorse, Ian suddenly realised that the service had come to an end and the men were starting to take away the small coffin.

He looked across towards his friend.

“Goodbye Tommy,” he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

That was when Ian Black first started to question the existence of God. Little did he know how many times and how deeply he would have cause to repeat that question in the years that lay ahead.

3.RUN LAD RUN.

Barrow-in-Furness, September 1912

A gloom hung over the family for the rest of August. Mary went back to the doctor who examined her but could not find anything wrong. A good “pick-me-up” was called for, Sanatogen and rosehip syrup. She took them dutifully but still had some bad mornings.

Donald decided that something was needed to cheer everyone up and he heard the lads at work talking about Ulverston Charter Festival. Ulverston is a country town, home of the Quakers who sailed to America, and is about ten miles west of Barrow, a very old town with a charter issued by King Edward 1 in the year 1280 to hold a jousting festival in the week around September 11th. Times changed and by 1912 it was a fair where local merchants sold their wares, sportsmen and a few women showed off their athletic skills and the fairground came to town. It was at this fair that the sport of pole vaulting was invented, some say as an adaptation from the jousting poles. Young and old came from all around and for a week all work and troubles were forgotten.

Barrow people couldn’t have a week to enjoy the fun but many travelled up by train on Saturday. The Furness Line was a goods line that linked across to Carnforth and over the industrial belt of the north but it had a beautiful old passenger train that looked like Stephenson’s Rocket, four coaches, a van at the back, coal tender and an engine where driver and stoker stood without a roof. Belching out soot and steam it stood in Barrow station ready to go.

Ian was a bit frightened of the monster but having everyone else there gave him some courage. They were all dressed in their best clothes for a special day. With an air of authority Donald purchased three return and three half-return tickets and they all climbed aboard. Twenty minutes later they stepped off and into Ulverston. All the town was decorated and there was a feeling of fun in the air. When they arrived at the fairground Ian and his brother Donnie feasted their eyes on all the myriad of temptations while older brother Johnnie feasted his eyes on all the young ladies. Bobby in the meantime had spied the sports programme and was checking out the running prizes.

“Look at this!” he shouted. “Ten pounds and a silver cup just for running.”

“Why don’t you give it a try?” encouraged his mother.

“Yes, Bobby. You can run. Have a go. You’ve got nothing to lose.” prompted Johnny.

“Aye son,” said his father. “You’re the fastest lad in your school but you don’t have running shoes.”

“I don’t need them,” countered Bobby,” I can run in my bare feet. I like the feeling and it makes me run faster.”

So that was it decided. Bobby entered for the 100 yards and the 200 yards and then off they went to sample the delights of the festival.

They came to “Gypsy Lee” the fortune-teller. Mary wanted to have her fortune told but Donald grumped that it was a waste of money. The truth was he was a little afraid to tempt fate. These last few years, life had been good and if it continued like this, fine but if the future was black he didn’t want to know. Highland women have many strange superstitions but it’s the men who, deep down, are really superstitious. So Mary bowed to her husband’s grumpiness and went to try the hall of mirrors. They all went in and screeched with laughter at each other’s distorted images. Mary shrunk to a squat dwarf size while Ian grew taller than his father. Donald’s body bulged outward and with it his moustache so that he looked like a comic version of the strongman poster and Bobby developed legs twice the length of his body. Young Donnie who was running back and fore between the mirrors announced that if Bobby could keep these legs he was guaranteed to win the races.

They came tumbling out the other end of the tent laughing and chattering, the boys pushing and jostling. Johnny bumped into a girl who was eating an enormous candyfloss. She jumped back and the sticky sugary mass squashed against her face. A couple of moments passed before Johnny recognised her as a friend from Barrow. Between laughter and apologies, he excused himself from the rest of the family and led her by the arm to find some water to wash her face. Mother, father and the younger boys continued to enjoy the fair, throwing balls, hoopla rings and rolling pennies in various attempts to win a goldfish or coconut.

Two goldfish and a coconut later they went to the field for the races. Quite a crowd was gathering so they decided to move down the track a bit, better placed to cheer on Bobby who kicked off his shoes and handed them to Donnie. Then he headed over to the starting line.

“Competitors take their places for the 100-yard flat race.” The voice boomed from a megaphone. The owner of the voice was on stilts and dressed in a light-blue, candy-stripe suit. He wore a top-hat of the same colours and had a moustache longer than Donald’s in the mirror.

“Come along now. Take your places. The first race today is 100 yards with a prize of ten pounds and the Charter Silver Cup.”

As Bobby moved forward to take his place on the starting line both Donald and Mary noted that most of the runners wore modern, spiked, running shoes and they all looked older and more experienced. Bobby himself began to have doubts as he saw the other competitors converging on the line, more than thirty of them jockeying for a good position to start the race. But our young lad hung back from the front, instinct telling him that he would more than likely go down in the first few yards among all these big lads.

The megaphone sounded. “On your marks! Get set! Go!”

A mass of bodies thundered down the track. Bobby put his head down and ran. He just ran and ran, skipping between runners as the bunch opened out. He didn’t see his family cheering as he passed. His eye caught an empty space in the outside lane and his legs thrashed out. Only a few in front and he pushed his body forward passing one then the other until his shoulder clipped the finishing tape. It took him a few seconds to realise that he had won.

But his winning didn’t go down well and some of the other runners didn’t hide their displeasure. Young upstart taking first place against more experienced men. He noticed them huddled in a whispering cluster. Nobody said, “well done lad”.

“Next race is the 200 yards and will start in thirty minutes,” called the man on stilts. Time to catch some breath and have a drink of water.

Johnny came back with his young lady friend. Her father worked at the Vickers’s yard and knew the Black family so she had gone to ask his permission to stay along with Johnny for the rest of the evening. Permission granted, they now had two more voices to cheer Bobby on. Once again they took up position half-way down the track and Bobby went to the starting line. The half-hour had passed quickly.

All the runners took their places, only about twenty this time, but Bobby hung back like before. This time he felt sure they would close around him and block him in just for spite. They still looked substantially displeased by his presence.

“On your marks. Get set. Go!” bellowed the candy-stripe man on stilts.

Off they went striding, pushing, squeezing to get the best position in the inside lane. Within the first fifty yards they began to form a tight line and Bobby moved out to a side lane then started to sprint forward. He began to pass them one by one so that as he was passing his family there were only four runners in front of him. Number four was a big lumbering lad who was beginning to puff and looked unlikely to keep up the pace. Bobby moved into line with him ready to nudge another bit nearer the leader but as his right foot went down the big lad stepped sideways with his left foot. The metal spikes jabbed in and hurt.

“Bastard!” cried Bobby as he felt the pain.

Mary, only a few feet away, saw clearly what had happened.

“Run lad! Run!” she shouted, “Run Bobby! You can do it.”

He heard his Mother’s voice among the crowd and his reaction was instant. Head down he thrashed his legs out like in the first race and within five strides the pain was gone. Three in the inside lane and the outer lanes were empty. He took a wide berth, put his head down and flew, thumping past the others pace by pace, oblivious to everything except the wind in his ears.

Again his shoulder broke the tape and a cheer erupted from the crowd.

With the race finished the pain came back to his foot but with adrenaline still running high in his veins he hobbled across to the other runners, picking out the lad who had spiked his foot.

“You did that on purpose,” he challenged and caught the big lad by the collar.

But his father moved in quickly, “Let it go son!” he cautioned, “You won. If you fight him now you’ll be disqualified.”

Big lads sometimes need to be put in their place but nobody argued with Donald Black, least of all his sons. Bobby let go the collar reluctantly and stepped back. One of the race officials came over with a medicine bag and they set about cleaning the wounds. Then they went back to the fair until it was time to collect the prizes, Bobby with his arm round Donald for support. By the time the races had all finished his foot had swollen quite a bit and walking was difficult but he managed to step up proudly onto the rostrum. Two cups and twenty pounds, he felt like a millionaire.

With this “millionaire” feeling and a very sore foot he suggested taking a horse and trap back to the station. Everyone agreed and so they left the fair in style, arriving at the station with an hour to spare before the train. The Station Hotel boasted an excellent dinner for four shillings so Bobby invited them to dinner. In they went and were shown to a table by a waiter in suit and bowtie. Silverware and white napkins on the table they had dinner in grand style.

Back in Barrow-in-Furness Donald decided that it was his turn to pay the cab and off they trotted across the bridge and home to Vickerstown. Two goldfish, one coconut, two silver cups and a pocketful of money, it had been a good day despite the sore foot.

Home in Avon Street, Mary put on the kettle for tea and Donald announced that his hero son had earned a “dram” of whisky so father and the two elder sons had a glass of whisky while Mary had her tea and the two younger boys attacked the coconut. They all chattered about the day and then mother and father began retelling stories of their young days in Lismore and Appin and of the great Highland Gathering and Games in Oban. Tartan kilts, pipe-band music, shinty, tug-o-war and real men’s sports. Half in English, half in Gaelic they laughed and joked and recounted stories that the kids had heard many times but still sounded good.

“Sing us a song, Mary!” demanded Donald and they all agreed “Yes, Mammy.”

So Mary sang, in Gaelic, first an island weaving song and they all clapped hands in time. Then her eyes flickered across toward her husband and she began to sing “Fàgàil Liòsmor”, a poignant song for most people but more so if you are from the little island of Lismore. Donald, his voice deceivingly soft and mellow, joined in the final chorus. The next day being Sunday their private little ceilidh went on till midnight but when the clock touched the Sabbath it was bedtime.

4. MAN OF IRON, BOYS OF STEEL

Barrow to Appin, March 1912

Nineteen twelve was a cold winter right through to March. Mary Black took to bed in mid-February. On the 16th of March she died leaving behind a husband and family distraught and bewildered at their loss. By this time the doctor had diagnosed cancer and her last few weeks were hard for her and the family.

Another time to the church to say goodbye, young Ian was deeply affected by the loss of his mother but his older brothers rallied round especially Bobby who, as the eldest still at school, became a mother substitute to the two younger boys. Donald and Johnny had to keep working. Number 10 Avon Street was no longer the happy home of just a few months before.

Later in June of that year Donald called the two younger boys together, Donnie aged 9 and Ian aged 6. He told them that he felt that now it was impossible to hold the family intact. He wanted them to go and live with their aunt in Port Appin.

“But that’s a long way from here,” said Donnie.

“Yes but you will have a home and a family that I can’t provide here.”

“Yes, you can,” cried Ian “Bobby looks after us. We’re OK here.”

Donald stood up and turned to look away from them. He couldn’t look at them as he said; “Your brother Bobby finishes school this week. He has signed up to go as apprentice engineer on the big ship that’s in the docks. The vessel sails next Tuesday.”

“But he’s not yet 14,” protested Donnie, “You have to be 16 to go to sea.”

“He lied about his age. He looks older,” sighed the father.

“Well, you have to stop him. Go and tell the Captain,” begged Ian.

“I can’t do that. His mind is made up. I will miss him as much as you but I can’t hold him here against his will. You know he’s a stubborn lad.”

Ian felt as if the whole world was crashing in around his ears. He ran out the door and up the hill across the island. He didn’t stop until he reached the shore and stood looking out over the wide Atlantic. Somewhere up there to the north was Appin and somewhere else out there, next week, Bobby would sail away out of their lives. He didn’t cry. The tears wouldn’t come. He was too confused.

Sunday arrived, more dismal than ever, and Donald decided despite his own agnostic nature that they should all go to church. So they dressed in their best, a little crumpled without Mary’s caring hand to iron things. The church in Walney was and still is St Mary’s, ironic in the circumstances. They sat sombrely through the service and at the end they walked home in silence. Bobby suggested that they take some bread and cheese and have lunch by the sea. They walked to Sandy Gap where Ian and Tommy had been throwing stones the year before and sat quietly eating some roughly-cut sandwiches. Nobody felt like talking — so many things that go unsaid — too difficult to say.

On Tuesday evening at high tide Bobby’s ship was ready to sail. His father and brothers stood on the quay and watched it un-berth and sail down the channel of Barrow Island. Bobby would be in the engine room seeing, for the first time, his new home. Several years would pass before they met again.

The first Saturday in July was set as the day for going north and the two young boys started to prepare and pack a big wooden trunk. At the bottom of the chest went the piece of mahogany for Uncle Dugald. Donald could not get time off from Vickers so he had written to his sister Sarah to ask her to come and escort the boys. She arrived on the Thursday and spent the whole of the next day cleaning and tidying, muttering as she went about men and their slovenly ways.

They got up with some trepidation on Saturday morning. Donald had managed to get away from work early so he went with them to Carnforth. A trap came to the house for Sarah with the boys and the big wooden trunk and they met Donald as he crossed the bridge from Vickers. At the station a porter put the “kist”, as Donald called it, on a trolley and took them to the train, the same one as had taken them to Ulverston. But this time they went through Ulverston and on to Carnforth. Here they would change to the Royal Scot as it stopped to change locomotives on its journey north from London.

At two o’clock precisely, the Royal Scot thundered into the station. And what a train! The two boys gaped in wonder at this great machine. Two hundred and thirty yards in length with fifteen coaches to accommodate some two hundred and fifty passengers, four hundred and fifty tons of steam-belching steel. It had left Euston station in London at ten in the morning and would arrive in Glasgow at five minutes to six in the evening. Donald smiled to himself as he watched the boys. This had just become an adventure. He helped them into their compartment and slid down the window to catch the trunk from the porter. He held his sons for a moment, ruffled their hair, and then hurried off, lest he got carried north too. Sarah and the boys leaned out the window to wave goodbye and the stationmaster blew his whistle to start off the train. Two sharp blasts more on the whistle and the driver responded with two blasts on the steam whistle. They were off!

As they pulled steadily out of Carnforth neither boy was aware that he would never return to Barrow in Furness. They were about to become Scotsmen. By tomorrow they would be Highlanders like their father. Quite a different life now lay ahead.

The first hour was the slow climb over Shap Fell to Penrith and then down to Carlisle. A few minutes out of Carlisle they were into Scotland and with full steam they rolled through the border hills, not stopping till they reached Symington just south of Glasgow. Here the great train split in three parts, one to Edinburgh, one to Aberdeen and the main part to Glasgow Central station. They arrived on time at 5.55 PM. The steam, the smell of coal smoke, the clamour of locomotives, rolling luggage trolleys, people shouting, railwaymen’s whistles, for two small boys the impact was immense.

Donald had given his sister sufficient money to take care of the boys so she decided to stay the night at the Central Hotel rather than try to push on further north that night, so they deposited their big trunk in the room and went to take a look at the city. In 1912 Glasgow was a thriving city, a whirling mass of people and commerce. Trams and trolley-buses passed in rapid succession throwing out sparks from their pantographs as they clicked across the joints in the overhead cables. There was a tramline in Barrow in Furness but here was a maze of tramlines each one swinging abruptly to the left or to the right as it came to the street corner. On both sides of every street were enormous shop windows with displays of all kinds. Weaving between the trams came large carts pulled by clattering horses, aproned boys on bicycles, railwaymen pushing hand-carts loaded with luggage and lots of the new cars, vans and lorries that were beginning to add to the congested throng of Glasgow city centre. Donnie and Ian just stood enthralled by the sheer mass of it all. Ian liked it but Donnie, at that moment, fell in love with Glasgow.

Next morning, they had to cross to Queen Street station, a smaller station but just as bustling. No big shops here, instead the open grandeur of George Square, grand opulent buildings of red sandstone and granite, both boys felt sure this was a place to come back to. It smelt of excitement.

They took the Oban train on the West Highland Line. They left at 10.00 AM and within half an hour they were in sight of Loch Lomond. This train was smaller and slower than the Royal Scot but no less exhilarating. Advertising posters for the Highland line claimed:

“Crossing bridges and viaducts, through tunnels and cuttings — this is one of the most exhilarating journeys in the world.”

If you are a first time visitor, this holds true. If you are a Highlander going home, this description is ineffectual. Our two young lads were a curious mix of the two. They were “going home” to a land they had never seen. Each mountain-side, each mountain-peak, each glen, each glittering loch, each river and waterfall, each curve of the line brought gasps of wonder from the boys. And as the train rounded the last curve before Connel there were whoops of delight as they caught their first glimpse of the Connel Ferry Bridge. Their mother had told them about it but she had never seen it. The bridge came into service the same year Donnie was born. Before that they had to take the longer route up to Fort William and come down by Ballachulish or take the little ferryboat across the loch at Connel.

On the journey up, Sarah had chatted to the boys, enjoying with them the excitement of the adventure. She had never married and so had no children of her own. She was going to enjoy looking after these two lads. She was aware that beneath the surface the boys were still hurting from the absence of their mother but with time she was sure she could make them happy in Appin.

The train stopped at Connel Ferry and here it was time to get off. Another short trip over the bridge through Benderloch and Barcaldine would take them to Appin. For this they had to wait about an hour for the train coming from Oban, the biggest local township. On arrival in Appin another horse and trap was necessary to take them from the station to the little hamlet of Tynribbie. The Blacks were the local carpenters. Both boys knew this but they were quite surprised to see the name-board above the carpenter’s shop. They felt a little famous. They took their trunk, one handle each and went into the little ironclad house across the road from the workshop, next to the church. This was called Mossend, home of their Uncle Dugald and his wife Flora.

5. THE GREAT GLEN

Appin, July 1912

“Go on boys. Just take a look all round,” invited Aunt Sarah, “Aunt Flora and I will just get us something to eat. I don’t know where that useless brother of mine is, probably whittling at a piece of wood somewhere. He’s never around when you need him. Go over the road to the workshop. You’ll probably find him there. Don’t worry about the dog. He barks but he won’t bite you. A bit like myself sometimes.” She smiled.

The two boys went out and, sure enough, a big Collie dog came bounding over, barking to sound its arrival. Donnie backed off but Ian just said, “Hello dog,” and the animal sensed the friendliness in his tone. It came up and started licking his hand. They went over to the small wooden workshop.

“JOHN BLACK & SONS Joiners and Undertakers” said the sign above the door.

“What’s undertaker, Donnie? Asked the younger brother.

“How am I supposed to know,” retorted Donnie.

They pulled open the door and went inside. Like their aunt had said, there was a man sitting whittling at a piece of wood with a knife. Ian started back with fright. The man was sitting on a coffin and there was another coffin behind him with the lid off.

“Hello boys. Come in! Come in!” he welcomed them into his domain.

“You must be Ian, and you’re Donald just like your father. The young lad’s more like his mother. Oh boys, it’s great to see you. Where’s your aunty? Has she given you something to eat?”

“Why are you sitting on a coffin?” asked Ian, still not sure of this strange man. “Are you Uncle Dugald?”

Dugald rolled back laughing and cackling in Gaelic. They had no idea what he was saying.

“Yes. I’m your Uncle Dugald. Didn’t you know I make coffins? That’s my work. I’m a joiner.”

“But my Daddy says you make fiddles.”

“Indeed I do valich but I would be rather poor just doing that. There’s more people in the Great Glen needing coffins than what’s needing fiddles.”

“What’s the Great Glen’” asked Donnie.

“Goodness but you two are full of questions. Gleann mor na-h Albin. Come! I’ll show you the Great Glen. Did your father teach you nothing?”

They went out and Dugald pointed out over the Loch to the hills beyond.

“There you see The Great Glen of Scotland. When God made Scotland he decided to cut a great river through the middle but he must have been interrupted because he never quite finished it. Away up at Inverness on the East side is the start of Loch Ness where the people say is an old sea monster. And then coming this way you have Loch Oich and then Loch Lochy and then at Fort William is Loch Eil and at the foot of Ben Nevis is the start of this loch here, Loch Linnhe.” He paused to make sure they were listening. “And then man came along and joined them all up with canals. That’s called the Caledonian Canal. And from here you pass down by “Liòsmor” Island there and past the island of Mull and you’re at Oban and then there’s nothing to stop you sailing all the way across the Atlantic.” He paused. “You do know what the Atlantic is?”

“Of course we do,” answered Donnie indignantly, “Walney is on the Atlantic.” He fought back a tear as the conversation reminded him of home.

“What’s the dog’s name?” asked Ian, down on his knees playing with the dog’s ears.

“Och, that beast. We called him “Gleann Mor” when he was a little puppy but now I just call him “dog”. He answers just the same.”

“Can we call him “Glen”? It’s easier.

“Call him what you like valich. I’m sure the dog won’t mind as long as you don’t pull his ears. He doesn’t like that.”

Aunt Sarah came out and called them in to eat. On the table was “Highland Tea”, treacle scones, ginger bread, pancakes and loads of butter and strawberry jam to spread on them. A big pot of tea lay in the centre of the table and for the boys Sarah had two big tumblers of lemonade that she’d brought from Barrow. The boys waited to see if Dugald or Sarah would say grace but instead Dugald urged them to help themselves and the cakes and scones began to disappear.

When they had finished Dugald said, “I believe you boys have something for me.”

Without replying the two boys ran off to their “travel kist” and turned most of their clothes and things out onto the floor until they reached the piece of mahogany. Donnie claimed the honour of presenting it to his uncle, and back they went to the sitting room.

“My, that’s a fine piece of timber boys,” enthused Dugald.

“Will you make a fiddle with it?” asked Ian.

“Well, I don’t know really. Some bits maybe. Perhaps I could get a nice neck from this side here but I like sycamore for the body. It gives the nicest sound especially for Scottish music. Look! I’ll show you.” And he stood up and went over to a fiddle propped in the corner.

“See here boys. You need soft wood in the body because we have to bend it to give the shape.” He rubbed his fingers gently over the curves of the violin. “The neck has to be stronger and the finger board needs to be hard for all the work when you’re playing. We usually use ebony for that”

“Can you play, Uncle Dugald?” asked Donnie.

“Aye Donnie lad. That I can. Would you like a wee tune?”

“Aye!” said both youngsters in unison.

So Dugald took them through a recital of his favourite tunes. They recognised some that their mother had sung but others were new to them. The fiddle lends itself well to the bouncy dance tunes, the jigs and reels and both boys preferred these to the slow Scottish airs. One of Dugald’s tunes seemed to appeal particularly to Ian. It was a march.

“Can you play that again?” he asked.

What he didn’t know was that it was his uncle’s favourite too, so Dugald’s bow danced across the notes of “The Bonnie Lass o’ Bon Accord” even better than the first time.

He finished and put the violin back in its corner.

“Can you teach us to play like that?” asked Donnie.

“Don’t be daft lad!” interrupted Aunt Sarah, “He hasn’t got the patience but Mrs Macgilvery at Duror is good at teaching the violin. Anyway we have to get your school organised first. We’ll go tomorrow and see the headmaster, Mr Macpherson.”

Dugald was a bit put out at his sister’s lack of confidence in him.

“Listen boys! I’ll tell you what. If you can learn to play The Bonnie Lass, I’ll make a fiddle just for you.”

The boys didn’t reply. They just nodded; aware of the task they had been set. Like most kids their attention turned quickly to the next question.

“Can we go to see Lismore?” It was Ian who was most anxious to see the island.

“Aye, we can go down to Port Appin now and you can see it from there but if you want to go across we can’t take the dog. He chases the sheep.”

“How do you get across?” It was Donnie’s turn to question.

“Oh, goodness, you boys and all your questions. There’s a boat. How else would you get across? Do you want to fly?”

“Oh, leave the boys alone, Dugald,” chided Sarah, “Go and take them to the port and they can look from there and then get them back to my house early so they can get a good sleep for school tomorrow.”

The answer came in Gaelic. Neither boy understood the words but felt sure it wasn’t laced with pleasantries. They went out of the cottage and turned right down towards the sea. The dog came along, walking between the boys. He had sensed his new responsibility. The island didn’t disappoint the two lads. It was just like their mother had described it and now as the sun dipped behind the hills it glowed in a pink haze. It wasn’t like Walney. It seemed to be about a mile away, dark and mysterious. Dugald pointed out various places but it was too dark now to see them clearly. They turned for home. They were to live with Sarah in Port Appin. Her house was the bottom half of a stone cottage with the delightful name of Cosy Den.

Life had changed today for all three of them, the two boys in a strange new place and the spinster aunt, now in the role of parent. Some interesting days were now before them. As the two boys lay in bed that night, recounting the day between themselves, soft strains of violin music drifted through the thin wooden walls. Slow melancholy tunes that floated through the house like the soft wisps of summer mist descending the glen. Dugald had gone home for a fiddle. With sleep about to conquer the excitement of the day they heard a tune they recognised. “Slumber gently goodnight, stars above shining bright,” they knew the words well, “Brahms’s Lullaby”. How many times had their mother sung that song? As Dugald’s bow skiffed lightly across the strings, drawing comfort and warmth from the softness of the melody, the two boys fell asleep.

Next morning Sarah escorted them to school just down the road. The summer break in Scotland starts and finishes a month ahead of England so Ian and Donnie lost their holidays that year. Port Appin School was just starting the new term so it was a perfect time to integrate into a strange school. And strange it was indeed for the two boys, just one teacher and fifteen or so children. Bella MacInnes was the teacher, only twenty-five years old and full of fun and enthusiasm. She welcomed the two young English boys. They both spoke with a peculiar accent. There were traces of their mother’s lilt but when they spoke they sounded like they were from Liverpool. In such a small class they became the source of fun for the first few weeks but they very quickly settled in.

The next few years passed uneventfully. In the lead up to the great war of 1914–18 there was increased demand for submarines so their father, Donald, was kept busy in Barrow and was able to send money north to his sister to take care of the boys. Slowly but surely they became part of the Appin community and began to learn Gaelic, not as a language in itself but in the way that it had become fused with English especially for hellos, goodbyes and quick exchanges. Even today in the 21st century you can have a conversation with a Highlander, all in English, and as you say “goodbye” he will answer “beannachd leibh” or at night “oidche mhath”.

The war with Germany deepened. Sadness crept into the village as the young men were called up to go and fight in the trenches along the Somme Valley in France and in Flanders. Many never returned and of those who did, many were profoundly affected. News came from Barrow that brother Johnny had been called up. And then he came home, shell-shocked and suffering from mustard gas, and died within a year.

Father, Donald, and brother, Bobby, came up to Appin shortly after this for a short visit. Bobby was home on leave from the sea and for Donald work in the yard was slackening as the war drew to an end. Bobby, by now, was a world adventurer and enthralled the two younger brothers with his tales of seafaring. He was a “donkey-man”. Both brothers laughed at this name. Steam ships in port had a small ancillary boiler to power the cranes and lifting gear. This was called the “donkey” boiler since it did the work. Bobby was the engineer in charge of this part of the ship. Ian was delighted to see his big brother again and lapped up all his stories.

They went out fishing in Dugald’s little boat. Bobby went swimming and tried to teach his brothers. They went roaming in the woods and they showed him the spot where the Red Fox was killed. Bobby thought they were talking about an animal. So they told him all about the story of the murdered tax collector. He was a Campbell and was murdered by one of the Stewarts of Appin in 1752 but they never found the real killer. James of the Glens was hanged for the crime and they left his body hanging for months so that everybody could see but he wasn’t guilty. Scottish schools had just recently become enthusiastic about the books of Robert Louis Stevenson and Ian was reading Kidnapped, the fictional version of this story. His uncle had told him that some of the old folk in Appin knew the name of the real killer but it was a family secret among the Stewarts.

All this was too much for Bobby. He had become a man of the world and obscure little folk-tales were not for him. He had changed a lot since Barrow. They had all changed. Once so close-knit they now had their separate worlds. Bobby had no desire to stay in the “Great Glen”. A couple of days later he received a telegram to pick up his boat in Glasgow. Donald the father went too. They hadn’t seen so much of him. He’d been most of the time in the pub. They all exchanged their goodbyes and life in Appin went back to normal.

In 1918 the war ended. Britain was numb from the loss of so many of its young men in such inhuman conditions. The public and in turn the government reacted with revulsion and cancelled all planned expenditure on defence. The submarine programme was shelved and work in Barrow in Furness ground to a halt. Donald was now out of work. Johnny was dead, Bobby away at sea and the younger boys up in the Highlands. A bitter man, he turned the key one last time in the door of number 10, Avon Street. He didn’t take the key to the factor’s office. He threw it in the water as he crossed Walney Bridge for the last time. But first he made one last visit to the little churchyard. Her tomb stood out from the rest. A large white marble bed and a headstone, like the headboard of a bed. “Mary the dearly beloved wife of Donald Black” He got down on his knees and cried.

“Goodbye, my love,” he said, stood up and walked away. He walked into Barrow and took the first train out. Changing trains at Carnforth, like the boys had done six years before, he headed north to Glasgow and the Clydeside.

6. BRAXY

Argyllshire, around 1916–20

Braxy is a disease common in sheep in Scotland. It is a chronic intestinal illness that claims a number of young sheep on the hills in winter. At the time of death, the animal gives off an offensive smelling gas. Mr. Macpherson, the head teacher of Appin School had an unpleasant smell of his breath. Perhaps that was why the children called him “Braxy”. Ian changed to Appin School at the age of eleven.

Braxy was a good teacher and his classes were seldom dull. He taught English and Gaelic and instilled in the youngsters an appreciation of God’s gift of nature and of their Highland history and heritage. The Jacobite uprising of 1745 wasn’t just a part of history. It was the fulcrum of the history of the Scottish Highlands. David Livingstone wasn’t just another explorer. He was the explorer of the 19th century, descended from the Livingstones of Lismore.

“Just like you Iain, my lad, from the Livingstones of Lismore, part of the Stewart clan.” He insisted on calling Ian by the Highland version Iain.

And that was it. The formal history class was abandoned while “Braxy” Macpherson launched into the Appin version of the battle of Culloden.

“Donald Livingstone would have been your Great, Great, Great Grandfather. Do you hear me, Iain Black? It was he who rescued the banner of the Stewarts of Appin after the Battle of Culloden. There were twelve clans, you know, whose banners flew that day. Disgrace fell upon the Highlands when they were burned publicly in the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh. That was the beginning of the persecutions of the clans, their tartans, their language, their lands and their livelihoods. But one banner didn’t fall that day. Young Donald, himself just a lad of eighteen, as the standard bearers lay bleeding on the heath, grabbed the standard, removed the precious banner and escaped the battlefield.

He wrapped the banner round his body and when knocked to the ground by a bullet the flag saved him. Up he got and jumped astride a passing horse. He was chased by two dragoon soldiers. He killed one and the other ran away. He rode all the way to the coast and then rowed out to Morvern. From there to Lismore he returned the Banner to its rightful owners.

Now there’s a story to tell your grandchildren, Iain Black.”

“But if my family are Livingstone, why is our name Black?” queried Ian, a little uncomfortable with the burden of such newfound fame.

“Hah, that’s an easy one to answer. Ask your own folks. They’ll tell you. Listen. First of all, the Livingstone name is from your mother’s side. Your father’s ancestors were Carmichaels and Maclarens. After Culloden the Campbells and their Redcoats scoured the Highlands looking for anyone who had sided with Prince Charles. One of your great, great, great uncles was the blacksmith at Tynribbie where your family still live. Three Redcoats came one day and questioned him about whether he was of one of the suspect clans. No, he assured them, everybody in that house was Black, and so they were, black from the soot of the forges.”

“Oh, Iain Black,” old Braxy continued, “You have a proud heritage valich, even if you are an Englishman. And speaking of heritage, our language isn’t persecuted any more so we will now begin our Gaelic lessons. For the rest of the afternoon we will speak only in Gaelic.”

So, over the years Ian and his older brother lost their North England accent and acquired a fine Highland lilt. Gaelic began to blend into their conversation. They learned some of the songs their mother used to sing and Ian learned to play some on the fiddle. He still couldn’t play “The Bonnie Lass o’ Bon Accord” like his uncle but he knew that his fiddle was already under construction. Life with Aunt Sarah however was becoming more tenuous.

In February 1919, one year after the end of the war, Ian turned 13 years of age. The money from his father had dried up since his move to the Clyde in search of work. The post-war years were not good for shipbuilding. Sarah, who was a dressmaker, was having to take on more work to keep Ian. His brother Donnie had already left school and was now working with his mother’s brother in the gardens of the nearby estate. Braxy’s stories of heroic ancestors were fine to tell your grandchildren but reality dictated that Ian would have to leave school and look for work. His education was deemed to be complete.

Destiny took him first to the home of other Highland heroes and antiheroes. Meggernie, in the wilds of Glen Lyon about forty miles from Appin, was the land that the Campbells stole from the famous Rob Roy Macgregor and from where a later generation planned and executed the Massacre of Glencoe. But as Ian trudged the last few miles of the glen with his pack of worldly goods on his shoulder he was going to work for the Wills family. W.D. and H.O. Wills were tobacco importers and makers of such famous brands as Woodbine, Bristol and Player’s. In Glen Lyon they had bought Meggernie from the Campbells and built up the gardens, the forests and the hill-farms. Ian caught the first morning train from Appin to Connel and then changed to the train that came out of Oban heading for Glasgow, the reverse of his journey with Sarah seven years before.

He got off at a small station in the village of Tyndrum about ten in the morning. From there he had to walk up a sheep track between the crags to the western end of Glen Lyon. There was no road except coming from the other side from Aberfeldy but the track was well trodden by sheep and cattle over many years. No doubt it was a track well used by Rob Roy and his followers. It climbed between Beinn Odhar and Beinn Charorach and along the side of Creag Mohr then down to the source of Loch Lyon. This was the month of February when Scottish nights close in about five o’clock and behind the mountain crags about four o’clock. Luckily it was a cloudless day so there was an extra half hour but the frost was falling so he had to try and reach houses before night made further travel impossible. He thought of Alan Breck and David Balfour, the fugitives of “Kidnapped” as he tramped through the heather.

The red glow from the west sank lower and lower behind the moors of Rannoch in the distance. The temperature dropped too as the soft glow turned to dusk. The landscape was desolate, not a house to be seen for miles. However, even as darkness fell he still managed to follow the side of the loch, jumping burns and gullies and hoping he didn’t fall in a peat bog, but he didn’t want to stop. Just when he was beginning to resolve himself to sleeping rough he came across a sheep pen with a small stone built shelter. It smelled a bit but was big enough to huddle down for the night. Just then he heard a whistle and a shout. He called out and a dog came hustling round his legs. Another whistle and a shout “Rory here!” and the dog ran off to the call of his master. A shadow came into view.

“Who’s that out on the hill at this time of night?” asked the shadowy figure.

“My name is Ian Black. I have walked from Tyndrum and I am going to work in Meggernie. Do you know how far it is?”

“Good heavens lad, you have about five miles more to go and there’s no road to guide you. It will take you a good two hours more and there’s a mist coming down.”

True enough wisps of night mist were rolling down the crags and the loch was no longer visible.

“You don’t sound very old,” the voice continued. “Where are you from?”

“I come from Appin. I’m thirteen. I finished school last week and have a job at Meggernie.”

“Well laddie, you can’t stay out on the hill all night; you’ll freeze to death. Why don’t you come back with me and my wife will find you some supper? You can sleep on the rug in front of the fire. My name is Duncan MacFarlane and the dog is called Rory. In the morning I’ll point you in the direction of the Castle.”

“OK, thanks,” replied the relieved young lad, “I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping outside and I was starting to get lost.”

So, down they went about half a mile to a little stone cottage. Mrs MacFarlane welcomed him in to the warm fire and they enjoyed a supper of “skirly”, fried oatmeal and onions. In the morning, still crisp with frost, Ian prepared to head down to Meggernie Castle. Duncan MacFarlane was the shepherd on the south side of the glen in charge of a growing flock of blackface ewes. They shook hands man-to-man outside the cottage and Duncan, who preferred being called Dochie, told Ian that he could do with a helper.

“Maybe someday valich you’ll come and be a shepherd.”

“Maybe Dochie. I’d quite like that. Beannachd leibh.” The Gaelic parting now came naturally to Ian.

When he reached the main estate his first impression was the enormity of the trees, giant elms with trunks fifteen feet wide and huge larch and fir trees reaching to the skies. He’d never seen trees so big. He found the gardens and one of the gardeners directed him to the factor’s office. By midday he was in employment as helper to the general handyman of the estate and his bag of worldly possessions were left by his bed in a workers’ bothy. The handyman was Donald MacNeil from the other side of Loch Tay. He had a workshop with sawyer’s tools and blacksmith’s anvil and all the tools and materials necessary to make what was required around the estate. This could be anything from snares for the trappers to catch rabbits to a shed or small barn for animals. He might be asked to repair a bicycle or clean the filters in the burn to maintain the water supply to the castle and its offices. The workshop was not unlike John Black and Sons at Tynribbie so Ian felt immediately at home.

The bothy, however, was not so welcoming, ten rough beds, each with a chest of drawers, and a wood-stove in the corner. The place smelled of working men and tobacco, creosote and stale food. But when he finished his first day with MacNeil and came back to sleep in the bothy the atmosphere was friendly. Ian was obviously the youngest and the oldest seemed to be a tall white haired man who spoke only Gaelic, no English. Everybody called him “skianach” so it was logical to assume he was from the Isle of Sky. Some worked in the gardens, some in the woods and a couple on the home farm. They explained that they took turns to make dinner, which would be a large pot of soup or stew. The lads from the gardens were allowed to take potatoes and vegetables and from the woodlands came a plentiful supply of rabbits, sometimes a hen from the farm.

Tonight though seemed to be a special treat. One of the farm hands, called Lachy, proudly proclaimed that he had made the greatest braxy stew. Just for a brief moment Ian thought they were going to eat his old headmaster. The look on his face demanded an explanation.

“Have you never eaten braxy?” asked Lachy.

“What is it?” asked Ian.

“ A braxy sheep has the best meat,” declared Lachy, ”but you have to get it when the sheep has just died.”

They sat down round a rough wooden table and the pot of stew was placed in the middle. It was indeed a tasty meal but Ian still had doubts. He decided that when it was his turn he would try to catch some burn trout. He had some hooks and line in his bag.

Their employers, the Wills family, had made their fortune from tobacco plantations in the Caribbean, presumably in the first years with the help of slaves. Their attitude to the workers on their Scottish estate was not significantly different. They had a roof over their heads and food in their bellies but not too many coins to rattle in their pockets. By December Ian had just enough for a ticket back to Appin for the New Year. This was the only holiday allowed and they worked every day except Sunday from six in the morning till six at night and even later in the summer. Despite the hard work the life was good fun and he was learning well from Donald MacNeil. He liked making things and quickly showed an aptitude for the work.

They made everything: doors, gates, windows and even the hinges and the latches. They built fences, sheds and, sometimes, small bridges. They made wheelbarrows for the gardens and maintained the wheels of the horse drawn carts. Every day was different, always something new.

Lachy, the farmhand, had a button keyed accordion or melodeon. He taught Ian to play some of the tunes that were more difficult on the fiddle. The skianach had a set of bagpipes and could play well but in the confines of the bothy he deafened everybody so they made him play just the chanter or play outside. The mood around the estate was jovial even though the living was frugal. Everybody knew his duties. Everybody knew his place in the hierarchy of the big household. Ian grew to like the place except for two things. He missed home and he hated Sundays.

He had to go to the church on Sunday. There were no exceptions. Everyone had to go and everyone had to look smart. The clothes that had served for work all week had to be spruced up and they all had to stand for an inspection by the estate manager or his assistant. A scuffed trouser knee invited a severe reprimand and dirty boots were just not tolerated. So added to the bothy odours and body odours each Saturday night were the smells of steaming trousers as they dried round the stove and of the pig fat that was used to protect and shine the boots. Ian hated the Sunday routine. He hated the piety and false holiness. He liked the hymns and their music but God’s Holy Word rang hollow in his ear.

7. THE BONNIE LASS

Meggernie, 1922

Spring rolled into summer, summer into autumn, autumn into winter. The years passed until Ian was sixteen and had been three years as assistant handyman. He loved the work; he loved the woodlands of Meggernie; he hated Sundays. He often wondered why it was that he never saw Dochie the shepherd at church. In the spring of 1922 the Wills family had important guests up from Bristol. A big shoot was arranged. Grouse and pheasants were released onto the moor and of course there were plenty of rabbits. The real prize though would be a deer. There was at least one royal stag roamed the glen. Ian had seen it many times with its head held high sniffing the air as if showing off its beautiful antlers and daring the world to try and claim them.

The shoot was arranged for early morning. All the workers of the estate fanned out along the south side of the glen and all the guests with their guns spread out to the north. The workers were the beaters, beating the earth and shouting as they moved up into the glen ahead of the guns. The morning passed pleasantly and the sun just glimpsed from behind the clouds. By noon they reached Loch Lyon and turned across the glen to come back down. It wasn’t considered wise to have loose cannons wandering among the blackface ewes.

“Ciamar a tha sibh, valich?” It was Dochie calling to Ian, “How are you, son?”

“Hello Dochie. It’s been a long time. How’s Rory? How’s Mrs. MacFarlane?”

“Oh, we’re all fine, lad, just fine. Listen lad! I’m needing some help up here more than ever. The Laird seems to want to fill the glen with sheep. Would you not be interested in being a shepherd?”

“I’ll have to ask Donald MacNeil. Am bi sibh anns an eaglais a-maireach?” Ian asked Donald if he would be in church next day.

“In church lad? Good God no! What makes you think that?”

“Well everybody has to go.”

“No, Ian lad, I don’t have to go. I have to tend the sheep. Sunday’s just another day. They still need tending.”

“Aye, well, that’s it decided, Dochie. If I don’t have to go to church I’ll be a shepherd but can you ask the factor?

They shook hands and Ian ran to catch up with the others. There was a spring in his step as he thought about Sundays without the dreaded inspection. Donald might have been reluctant to agree; he liked this young lad who learned quickly and who always left a good finish on every job he did; but his own son was about to leave school and would be needing a job. So it was he who spoke to the factor and the following week Ian set off up the glen again this time to work with Dochie.

In his first week it was “dipping” time. All the sheep had to be caught and dipped in a tarry smelling disinfectant to kill the tics that clung to their skin, sucking blood. He was introduced to Lassie, the mother of Dochie’s dog Rory. They were black and white border collies, well trained in the art of shepherding. Ian learned the whistles and calls that were needed to guide Lassie in what he wanted her to do but in truth she knew what do without him.

The work was hard and constant, but surprisingly it was never dull. Each season brought something new. The dipping, clipping the wool, lambing time, bringing the flock down the glen for winter and watching out for braxy and other ailments that befell the sheep, searching for strays so they didn’t fall foul of marauding foxes, selecting and preparing animals for market, just wandering the hill with Lassie by his side, Ian loved it.

A postcard arrived one day from Aunt Sarah in Port Appin. At forty-nine years of age she had decided to get married. The lucky man was her second cousin Donald Black a gardener. They were moving home to an estate called Letterwalton in Barcaldine about five miles from Appin. Ian loved his aunt and was happy that she would not be alone but a little disconcerted that he had nowhere to go home to. Hard on the heels of this news came a letter from his brother Donnie. He had grown tired of gardening and spent a year as apprentice blacksmith but now was going to Glasgow to seek his fortune. Their father had found a flat in Chancellor St. on the west side of the city and Donald would stay with him for a while. Why didn’t Ian come too? But Ian was enjoying life as a shepherd.

Dochie had an old fiddle, which he played sometimes. He preferred old Scots songs rather than Gaelic tunes and one night played “The Bonnie Lass o’ Bon Accord” much to Ian’s delight.

“Have you ever been to Bon Accord, Ian lad?” he asked.

“Where’s that?”

“It’s a nickname for Aberdeen. Listen. I’ll play you “The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen.”

Dochie played the song in the perfect timing of an old Scottish Waltz.

“Have you ever seen them?” he asked.

“Seen what?”

“The Northern Lights, laddie, the aurora borealis.”

“That sounds like the name of a rose.”

“Go outside and see what the weather’s like. I think it’s frosty.”

Ian went out and returned to confirm that indeed it was frosty and there was a beautiful clear sky.

“Alright get your boots on and your jacket. We’re going for a walk.”

Ian thought they were going to check some sheep but instead they went south towards land that was not part of Meggernie up the side of Ben Lawers. They climbed for more than an hour, stumbling now and then in the dark, and then stopped on the top of a crag.

Dochie turned to face the north. “Look there!” he pointed. “That’s the Northern Lights. I don’t know why everybody thinks they’re in Aberdeen. They’re at the North Pole and you see them perfectly well from here.”

Beyond Rannoch Moor and the distant hills there was an amazing sight. Hundreds of shafts of light danced in the sky, vertical beams of white and purple sparkled then disappeared. They watched in silence for a few minutes and then set off back down the hill chatting as they went. Dochie explained how the last rays of sun at the North Pole produced the phenomenon and how it was only visible on clear frosty nights.

Back in the cottage they warmed up in front of the fire. Ian picked up the fiddle and asked if he could play a few bars.

“I didn’t know you could play,” said the older man.

“I can’t. My fingers are too short,” replied the lad but he managed a reasonable rendering of Northern Lights. “I’d love to play The Bonnie Lass but my fingers don’t move fast enough.”

“Never mind your fingers. The music isn’t in your fingers. It’s in your head and in your heart. Just think of the music and play. Don’t look at your fingers. You know where the notes are. Just play.”

So he played, scratchily at first, but with a few night’s practice and lots of encouragement and guidance from his tutor he began make the older man’s foot tap in time so he knew that at least he was getting the rhythm right. On the Saturday night Dochie decided that a dram was in order so he poured them both a glass of malt whisky, took the fiddle, played the problematic tune and handed the instrument to his assistant. Ian played perfectly except for just one note that kept eluding his second finger.

“That song was written by James Scott Skinner, Ian, and he wrote the music specially for the fiddle.” Dochie was enjoying the job of music teacher. “ I read the music sheet one time and Skinner explained all the bow movements and how each line should be played. Here let me show you,” and he took the fiddle from his pupil and demonstrated the technique.

And so the winter nights passed and spring came again to the glen. That year the flock grew and they moved right up to the top of the glen and over to the limits of the estate bordering the railway line that went from Crianlarich to Fort William. Ian learned that this was an alternative route home to Appin curving round by Kinlochleven and then back by Ballachulish instead of the south link at Connel. It wasn’t any shorter but sometimes the train times were more convenient. For the holiday of New Year 1924 he took this route and noticed the beginnings of the construction of the new highway to Fort William, later to be called the A82. The motorcar was starting to impact the Highlands.

In the spring of the year Dochie and Ian began the annual round up of the sheep for clipping and dipping. Most were down in the pens but about fifty remained at the western extremes of the hill-farm next the railway. They had nearly finished the day and both dogs and men were getting tired. Ian and Lassie pulled a group of ten or so from a bank of grass next the railway track. The same number had crossed the track and Dochie sent Rory in a round sweep to bring them back across the track. The 6.30 Fort William to Glasgow rounded a curve in the line and came into view just below Ian. Rory was just going to make it in time. The train driver saw the movements up ahead and pulled two blasts on his whistle.

Two of the ewes panicked at the line and started back up the embankment. Rory snapped at the others chasing them on clear of the track and ran back up the mountainside coming in on the two strays from above. He growled chastisement and nudged them back towards the track. One crossed. The other went halfway and hesitated. Rory slipped and slithered down the embankment and chased the tardy sheep across the line. As the dog jumped across the track the front of the locomotive hit him smack in the belly. He slumped over on the track and the train rumbled on.

As the end of the train left the scene Dochie and Ian charged down to help the stricken dog. Rory lay in two halves, legs still kicking, the hind part in between the lines and the head and front quarters lying in the heather. Dochie screamed.

“Help me Ian,” he wailed as he tried to push the two parts together, “He’s alright. He’s still moving. Help me, Ian. For Christ’s sake help!”

“We can’t Dochie. He’s dead.”

Two hours later, as dusk came down, Dochie seemed to accept the inevitable. The two shepherds walked down to the cottage each carrying half a dog with its mother, Lassie, whimpering at their heels. They buried Rory quietly behind the house. Dochie didn’t speak to his wife or to Ian. He took the whisky bottle from the kitchen and walked alone to the shores of the loch. He never recovered from the loss of his dog. Another collie was sent from the farm across the glen but it wasn’t Rory. By summertime the atmosphere was pulling Ian down too so he decided it was time to move on. He took his leave of poor Mrs MacFarlane and walked away in the direction from which he had come as a boy of thirteen. He took the train north to Fort William, passing the spot where Rory died. As they passed the new road works the incline increased and the train slowed to walking pace. Ian opened the door and jumped then ran to slam the door shut again. He walked over to the road works and asked for the foreman. Next day he was a road-builder, no longer a shepherd.

Road building was no fun, just pick and shovel hard labour, but the pay was better than estate work. The bothy was a hastily thrown together wooden hut. By December the road was cut through as far as Kinlochleven. Snow brought work to a standstill. Ian took his earnings and set off to catch a train back to Appin for Christmas, his first break since starting in Meggernie nearly four years before. Back home in Appin things had changed; Aunt Sarah was away; old friends were grown up and working and Dugald grumped that his brothers were becoming more interested in motorcars than in carpentry. The fiddle making had slowed up in favour of his new hobby, painting watercolours but Ian’s fiddle was complete.

“I said I would make you both a violin but your brother has gone up to Glasgow so you can have this one and he’ll get his when he comes back. But first you have to play a few tunes.

Ian took the new fiddle, checked that it was in tune and played “The Bonnie Lass o’ Bon Accord”. Only someone who knew the tune well would know that he still had one note wrong. Dugald knew but was delighted with his nephew’s performance. He wasn’t looking for perfection. He wanted people to enjoy his fiddles. Now he knew that Ian would.

“It’s yours Ian. Have fun with it.”

Ian took it and for the rest of his life it was his proudest possession. He never became a maestro but as Dugald wished he had fun playing it. With the few shillings that he still had from the road-building work he bought a small button key accordion and a second hand bicycle. He found accommodation with a cousin John Black who lived in a small stone cottage called Burnside and went to work for a few years in the family carpenter’s business. With the handyman skills he learned at Meggernie there was no shortage of repair jobs to keep him occupied.

8. I BELONG TO GLASGOW

Glasgow, 1929–30

On April 29th 1929 Ian was in Glasgow. He had come down to be best man and witness at the wedding of his brother Donald and his bride Bessie. Donald had established a small radio repair shop in the Maryhill area. This was Ian’s first time back in Glasgow since his trip north from Barrow in Furness with Aunt Sarah seventeen years before. The city still had its exciting, bustling appeal, if anything more so now that the motorcar was fighting for street space with the trundling tram.

It was a chance to meet some of the family that he had never met, Blacks, Grieves and Livingstones but the greatest thing for Ian was another opportunity to meet up with his father and Bobby and hear about their adventures. Donald, his father, still had the flat in Chancellor Street but son Donnie hadn’t stayed long with him there. He had started working as barman with McEwan’s brewing company and moved around from pub to pub and now he was getting married and setting up his own home in Glasgow. Donald the father had spent the last year in the USA on a middle-aged adventure meeting up there with Bobby. He paid a year’s rent in advance and went to see something of the new world.

“It’s a wild place,” he told Ian, “Everybody carries a pistol like the stories of the Wild West and they’d cut each other’s throat just to get a job.”

“Did you and Bobby have a gun?”

“I had a Colt revolver but Bobby didn’t. He didn’t stay long.”

“Did you shoot at anybody?”

“Don’t be daft lad. I wasn’t supposed to have it. I kept it hidden.”

“Where did you go?”

“New York, Chicago and up to Canada but I didn’t get in. Bobby did. He’s some lad that brother of yours.”

“What did he do?”

“Well, we went up the Niagara River and went to see the falls and then Bobby took it into his head that he was going to live in Canada. We went up river to Lewiston, that’s in the state of New York and we crossed the bridge to go into Queenstown on the Canadian side but the Mounted Police said no because we didn’t have the right papers. So what do you think your daft brother did? He shook my hand, said bye-bye, jumped into the river and swam across. He’s a crazy man, worse than his father,” he cackled and slapped the table. “And what about you, Ian lad? What have you been doing?”

Ian brought his father up to date with his own tamer adventures.

“Why don’t you come and stay a spell here with me in Glasgow? I’ll get you a job in the shipyard and we can have some fun in the Glasgow pubs.” Donald asked his youngest son. “Bobby’s here a few days and then he goes back to sea. I’ll be on my own. It gets lonely, son. I don’t like it. We can go and see Partick Thistle. They’re doing alright you know, beat Rangers last week.”

It didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Appin was a bit dull for a lad of twenty-three. Maybe Glasgow could offer some excitement. The wedding drew to a close as everybody waved away the newly married couple.

“Good luck to you both,” Ian wished his brother and his wife, “I’ll come and see you in Maryhill.”

The couple drove away in one of the new black taxis. The wedding reception began to break up and eventually Ian, Bobby and their father took a tram and went to the flat in Chancellor Street. This is just off Byres Road in the West End of Glasgow, mid-way between the University and the area of Partick. In the twenties and thirties it was a thriving commercial area with Lipton, Cooper and Templeton each having a grocery store and with RS McColl, the news and tobacco shop on one side of Byres Road and James Birrell vying for the same trade on the other, right next to the subway station, tailors’ shops, hardware stores, two cinemas showing the newest movies. At the top was Great Western Road with the Botanic Gardens and at the bottom Dumbarton Road with the Kelvin Hall exhibition centre. Very, very different to quiet little Port Appin.

Donald was as good as his word and found work for Ian in the Partick shipyard. The pay was good, much better than in the Highlands. The work was interesting too, assistant to a carpenter fitting high quality doors and fixtures around the ship. He didn’t really like the crowded feeling working alongside three hundred other men with the constant banter in the “Glesga” language, that took some time to get used to, but everybody was friendly. Nearly all conversational exchange was about football. The yard was split three ways. Catholics supported Glasgow Celtic; Protestants supported Glasgow Rangers; anybody that wasn’t sure or didn’t care supported the local team Partick Thistle. Ian logically fell in the third group and started going to all the home games played at Firhill.

Ian loved Glasgow: the trams and clattering traffic, bars on every corner, shops right on your doorstep with everything you could possibly want, street vendors selling the evening newspaper, the charm of the people, the smell wafting up from the subway entrance, the sheer exuberant life of the city. Some things he didn’t like so much. His father had changed a lot. He was drinking too much and was moody, swore a lot and left the flat in a constant mess which Ian, a lover of order and tidiness, had to clean up. Other times they had fun together especially at the Partick Thistle games. But this wasn’t the father he remembered from infancy, the rock of the family that everyone could lean on. Nowadays he was leaning on Ian and grumpy with it.

The next spring, 1930, Thistle were at a peak, pushing Rangers hard for the SFA Cup. The last time they had won the cup was in 1921 and tension was mounting as the quarter and semi finals played out. Then came the final itself against Rangers at Ibrox across the river. Impossible to resist, Ian invited his father to the game and he accepted. On the day, however, there seemed to be some liaison between his father and a woman so Ian went alone to the big match. What a game! Tension till the last whistle. But, when it blew, it was Rangers who walked away with the cup. Most of Glasgow seemed to be there and, as the crowd poured out, all the trams were filling up the moment they stopped. Ian went for the subway.

There were crowds in the subway too but each train took two or three hundred, crammed in, with standing room only. Normally from Ibrox to home was four stops, Govan on the south side then under the River Clyde to Partick, Kelvinhall and then Hillhead on Byres Road just a hundred yards or so from the flat. Today Ian decided to get off at Partick and walk the rest. A few people got off at Govan and then down they went under the river.

“Crack! Puff! “ All the lights went out and then a long whining clickety-click as the train came slowly to a halt. Everybody stayed still and quiet, and then slowly the chatter rose to a crescendo in the silent train. Nobody knew what to do. Some suggested jumping from the train but what if another train came along. Glasgow subway was and still is just one continuous circle of about six miles of double track, two parallel circles going opposite directions. It was built in 1896 and served the city well. The trains just went round and round forever. Power cuts like this didn’t happen very often.

A subway official arrived with a lantern. It seemed that Partick station was the nearest and the other trains were all stopped. Everybody got off the train and had to walk about half a mile along the damp, dark, narrow tunnel. Glasgow Herald and Evening News reporters were waiting on the Partick side to catch the drama of the event. Ian punted himself up out of the track and walked quickly out of the station into the fresh night air.

The next week Al Jolson’s “Mammy” came to Glasgow. This was fourth in his series of crowd pulling films. Just two years before his “Jazz Singer” was the first commercial talking movie and it had taken the world by storm. Now Ian had the chance to go and see his latest incredible music show on screen.

“I’d walk a million miles for one of your smiles, my Ma-a-am-m-y”

At twenty-four years of age Ian Black sat in the cinema with tears in his eyes. He too would walk quite a few miles for one of his Mammy’s smiles but it wasn’t just that. Al Jolson was the greatest singer he’d ever heard. He sat there in the cinema enthralled by the singing, the music, and the magic of all these people coming alive on screen.

“The sun shines east. The sun shines west.

But I know where the sun shines best.

Oh! Ma-a-a-a-m-m-y!”

He left the cinema singing.

He went back to see Partick Thistle the next week but it wasn’t the same as the thrill of the cup final. The football season ended in anti-climax and summer was spent enjoying the parks and the Botanic Gardens. One Sunday he took a tram up to the city centre and the Pier at the Broomielaw. Here MacBrayne’s Steam-shipping Company operated a number of ferry vessels that went down the Clyde and out to the Hebrides. The Saint Columba went down by the towns of the Clyde like Gourock, Greenock and Tignabruich and to the Islands of Bute and Arran. The ship took hours to chug down as far as Arran. It was a pleasant trip but by the time Ian got there it was time to catch the next boat back to Glasgow. On the return trip they had a band and singer on board and Ian learned a new favourite song, “Sweet Rothesay Bay”.

That winter the Great Depression brought chill winds across the Atlantic. The demand for military vessels was still in decline from the pacifist mood of the twenties and with the American economy in tatters there was no immediate need for transatlantic liners. The shipyards started to lay off workers, last in first out. Ian was out of a job. With no money in his pocket to go to the games, Thistle lost some of their glitter. The shops, that a year before had such magic appeal, just rubbed salt in raw wounds. Father’s answer was to drink more. He, for the moment, still had a tentative job. Before all his money was gone Ian bought a train ticket back home to Appin. He decided that deep down he didn’t really belong to Glasgow; best leave now and remember it with affection. He said his goodbyes to his father and to Donnie and Bessie who now had their first son then took the train back up west.

9. THE BARCALDINE LADS

Barcaldine, Argyll, 1931–36

Back in Argyll Ian felt he was home. He moved back in with his cousin and went in search of work. He took his bicycle out of storage, pumped up the tyres, and set off for Barcaldine to Letterwalton to see Aunt Sarah. Maybe she would know of a job that was going. She was pleased to see him and asked all about her brother Donald and nephew Bobby and how was Donnie and his new wife and son.

As to the job hunt she suggested he might try the Forestry Commission. This government commission had been set up with several objectives in mind. First they wanted to make Britain less dependent on other countries for timber, secondly they desperately wanted to reduce unemployment and most importantly right at the moment was the need to redevelop diminishing rural economies like the Scottish Highlands. Enormous tracts of land had been bought and whole mountainsides drained and planted mostly with coniferous trees. It seemed that nearly half of Argyllshire was ripe for forestation. More recently there was increasing demand for the exploitation of old standing forests to provide wooden sleepers for rail track and telegraph poles for the rapid expansion of the telephone network. Barcaldine forest had just been started and lots of local lads were now working in forestry.

Back on his bike Ian went in search of Willie Fairbairn, the young forester in charge of the local project.

“I’m afraid just about all the posts are filled,” he told Ian apologetically, “but I’ll tell you what. I need a handyman if you think you’d be any good at that. We have lots of tools to maintain, fences and huts to build and things like that and also a bit of trapping. Every time we plant a new section the rabbits think it’s breakfast time. What do you think?”

“That sounds just about perfect. When do I start?”

“Next week if you like. Where are you staying?”

“I’m in Appin but I’m sure my aunt in Letterwalton will take me in for a while.”

“Well,” thought the forester, “one of your first jobs will be helping build two houses at Achacha. You know? They’re made of corrugated iron, not very big and they can build two semi-detached in a couple of weeks. Duncan Ferguson and his sister are getting one but the other one is available if you want to rent your own place.”

Ian smiled. A few days ago he was in the thronging midst of Glasgow. Now he was being offered a quiet little cottage just for himself in the back of beyond. Yes. Maybe that was more like the real Ian Black; the quiet recluse. He’d loved his time as a shepherd and now here was a chance to be himself but near enough to the friends and places that he knew. Glasgow was just a train journey if he felt the need for some footballing excitement. Achacha was just a mile or so from his aunt’s house.

“Alright!” he decided, “I’ll take it.”

Barcaldine is a small, scattered village on the southern shores of Loch Creran where it joins the start of Loch Linnhe. Between the two lochs lies the village of Appin so that Barcaldine forest overlooks the loch and then Port Appin where Ian grew up. To the west lie the islands of Lismore, Mull and the peninsula of Morvern. The Mainland area from Loch Etive to Ballachulish at the top of Loch Linnhe has always been one big scattered community, historically disputed between Stewarts and Campbells. At the start of the 20th century the coastal villages were all linked by the formation of the Ballachulish Branch of the West Highland railway line. Starting at Connel Ferry it crossed the new bridge to North Connel then Benderloch, Barcaldine, Creagan, Appin, Duror, Kentallen, Ballachulish Ferry and ended at the small town of Ballachulish.

Fifty years before the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 the Stewarts started exploiting a slate quarry at Ballachulish. Two hundred years later a rail link was decided upon and constructed to extract the slate for house building around Glasgow. All the smaller villages benefited from the new rail line and very quickly formed into one large rural community. Barcaldine merited a goods station mostly for timber extraction and there was a “halt” for passengers, just a wooden footbridge and platform. Ian’s new home was in the forest area about a mile from the train halt.

Ian Black was back in his natural habitat, old Argyll. Fish in the sea and fish in the mountain streams. Red deer in the mountain glens and roe deer in the lower woodlands. Golden eagles in the rocky crags and seals and otters playing in the rocky pools of the loch shores. Trees considered something worthy of respect and once cut to be moulded lovingly into something useful and replaced by two or three young saplings. He settled back in easily to the forest life. Glasgow’s city smells had character; Barcaldine’s forest smells had soul.

In the next few years the skills he had learned were put to good use. He made wooden huts, fences and wooden stiles to cross the fences, bridges to cross little streams, gates to keep the animals in check. He repaired tools, sharpened tools and often made tools. He fashioned snares to trap the rabbits and kept the neighbourhood fed with rabbit stew. Woodwork, metalwork, leatherwork, design, make and mend. Behind his house he hewed out a garden from the course land and produced flowers and vegetables that astounded his friends. And friends he had in good supply. He became well known and well liked despite his hermit lifestyle. He retained his love of music and sport although he never participated deeply in either.

In April 1933 he was “official guide” when a gang of the forest lads descended on Glasgow to see the Scotland-England football international. They persuaded Willie Fairbairn to give them Saturday morning off and all dressed up in their Sunday best they took the train to Glasgow Queen Street and then a tram to Hamden Park. Scotland won! McRory scored! Hamden roared! They got back to the station in time for the last train to Oban with some whisky and beer for a “dram” on the way home. A day that these Highland lads would never forget.

In the back end of the same year they decided that Barcaldine ought to have a shinty team and think about competing in the Camanachd Cup. Shinty is a hard man’s sport played in the Scottish Highlands. It is like hockey but instead of a puck there is a hard leather coated ball and the head of the stick is triangular and thicker so that the ball can be struck in both directions. In most games the opponent is struck more often than the ball and the players always need good leg protection. They also need a good stick and being a minority sport they are not easy to come by. The shinty stick is called a caman, which in Gaelic means simply curved stick. The Camanachd Association controls the game and its various leagues but the real prize each year is the Camanachd Cup. Ballachulish had a good team so why not Barcaldine.

They had a few sticks, borrowed a couple and Ian Black and his friend Hugh MacFarlane volunteered to make the rest. Hugh’s sticks broke in the first practice match but Ian had chosen his wood well and his sticks went on to enjoy many years of use. Good camans are made from hickory but Ian climbed the glens looking for young ash trees that curved out from between the rocks. The team never quite achieved Camanachd Cup level but they had some good fun.

The next year they settled on an easier sport. A tug-o-war team was assembled and in June they took part in the Oban Highland games. They took second last place but Oban had an adequate number of bars to commiserate their less than outstanding performance.

In the winter of 1935 someone suggested that dancing might be a more fruitful pastime. Lots of families had an accordion or fiddle in the house so they decided to hold a Friday night dance and take turns playing the music. It was a success and some thought was given to hiring more professional players. A number of Scottish country-dance bands were starting up and dances were becoming popular in all the villages. The Barcaldine lads took turns to be responsible for hiring a band and taking money at the door to pay the band.

Ian’s turn came but he didn’t know of any band that hadn’t played already. The dance was to be the following Friday and he still didn’t have a band booked. A new cinema had just opened in Oban and on the Saturday of the week before the dance Ian went to see the latest film offering. When he came out of the cinema there were two tramps playing for money on the street. They were playing a Highland Schottische and they were good. Just as he was about to throw a coin in their hat he had an idea.

“How would you two like to play at a dance in Barcaldine on Friday night?”

“Aw, naw, naw, naw, friend. We’re no’ good enough for that,” replied the fiddler.

“You sound good enough for me. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you come and play a few dances and then you can put your hat round.”

“Well, ah don’t know, maybe. What d’you think Willie?”

Willie the accordionist seemed quite happy with the proposal.

“OK” said Ian, “Be in the hall in Barcaldine at seven o’clock on Friday.”

During the week, each time Ian was asked about the band, he just said it was booked and one of the best he’d heard. On Friday evening at seven a sizeable crowd had gathered ready to dance. The two tramps appeared with their instruments as promised.

“Gentlemen take your partners for a Highland Schottische,” bellowed the accordionist above the chatter of the crowd.

Several gentlemen took their partners and the “band” started to play. There were nods of approval and some of the boys complemented Ian on his choice of band. The dance finished and everybody waited expectantly for the next offering. The two instrumentalists seemed to have a minor disagreement and then the violinist stepped forward to announce the next dance.

“Gentlemen take your partners please…” he began hesitantly.

The men were warmed up ready for an Eightsome Reel while the ladies would have preferred a Scottish Waltz.

He cleared his throat and started again. “Gentlemen take your partners for a Highland Schottische.”

The music was good so the dancers of Barcaldine obliged with another round of the Schottische but when the third dance was called again the same they pounced on Ian Black.

“Where the hell did you get these two from, Ian?” asked Shonan MacDonald.

Ian didn’t answer. He went for his two players. “You’ll need to play something else, a waltz or something.”

“But we only do one set of tunes. We can’t do a waltz or anything. We practiced these for playing on the street and everybody’s happy with them.”

“Well, leave me your instruments and go round with your hat.”

By now some people realised what was happening and like good Highland folk they filled the tramps’ hats generously. A young dark haired man stepped forward. He shook hands with Ian.

“My name’s Calum,” he said, “you’ll be needing someone to take over the box,” referring to the accordion.

“Aye, can you play?”

“I can play a few tunes,” answered Calum.

“Well, come on. We’ll give it a try.” Ian turned to the expectant crowd. “Gentlemen take your partners for a Gay Gordons.”

With Ian on the fiddle and Calum on the “box” they managed to get through the evening, greatly helped by a couple of “drams” from the half-bottle in Calum’s jacket pocket.

“So who are you, Calum?” asked Ian once they’d played the last waltz, “I’m sure I’ve seen you before but you’re not from Barcaldine.”

“Ach, well, more or less. I’m from Benderloch, Calum MacKenzie. You probably know my brother George MacKenzie. He’s with the forestry, in charge of cutting out the trees for telegraph poles. I’m with the telephone company putting in the lines.”

“George? Aye, everybody knows George. Last year he took out the trees for telephone poles and sent the tops up to Glasgow to sell for Christmas trees. His family had a nice Christmas.”

“Aye. That’s George. Listen, you’ll need to come home some time for a ceilidh. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Ian Black. I’m from Appin but I’m staying now at Achacha.”

“Oidche mhath, Ian. We’ll meet up again sometime.”

They met a few times in the next couple of years and George moved with his family to live just down the road from Ian but the ceilidh in Calum’s home at Baravullin, Benderloch didn’t take place for a couple of years

10. I’LL DANCE AT YOUR WEDDING

Benderloch, June 1937

Benderloch is the last village in the Great Glen on the shores of Lorne just before it opens out towards the sea at Oban. Like most Highland villages it is difficult to say where it starts and where it ends. On some maps it shows as Ledaig and on others it is a wispy creature that lies between Barcaldine and Ardchattan. Where one village stops and the other begins, is known only to the locals. But everyone around knows Trallee Bay, a beautiful sandy cove in an otherwise rocky coastline. About two hundred yards from Trallee is an old stone cottage called Baravullin. For half a century this was the home of the MacKenzie family; Donald the father was a postman and his wife Jessie, the mother of eight young MacKenzies, helped Donald tend the small croft that was attached to the house.

There were five boys and three girls. The youngest boy, Hector, died in his teens in 1931. The eldest, Kenny, was a piper in the Gordon Highlanders and in 1937 was finishing his army days in Jamaica. The other three brothers, George, Iain and Calum had become involved in the activities of the Forestry Commission around Barcaldine although just recently Calum had changed to the telephone company. Instead of growing telegraph poles he was now erecting them and installing cables. Of the sisters Katy, the eldest, was married, Elisabeth the second was establishing a nursing career in Glasgow and Christina, the youngest was firmly stuck at home.

It happens in many families. The youngest, though often the brightest becomes trapped, supporting the parents, as they grow older while the elder siblings drift away, free of responsibility. Christina had tried to move out. She really wanted to do something with her life and had set out to copy her sister in the world of nursing but came scurrying home, a bag of nerves after the first year. An intensely sensitive person she wasn’t ready for the big world outside Benderloch. But she could still dream! Of charming suitors, Hollywood kisses and happy ever after!

Life, the real thing however, was a drudge. Electricity still hadn’t reached Benderloch so light was by paraffin lamp. Christina had to carry two-gallon drums of paraffin from the village. Water came from a well about a hundred yards from the house. Guess who carried the buckets? And her father, now retired, suffered sciatica and her mother frequent bouts of asthma so winter fuel collecting was another delightful chore. There was a peat moss on the moor and summer months were spent cutting and drying the peat and to supplement this were some pine logs cut from trees behind the house. This meant taking an end of the old heavy saw along with her father. To make some extra money her mother took in laundry all to be washed by hand with water hauled from the well. On good days the washing hung to dry on the gorse bushes around the house. On wet days it hung around the house so that they could never escape from other people’s clothes.

It was on such a day that she had the most blazing row with her parents. She loved music: had grown up surrounded by music. She loved playing harmonica, the mouth organ as they called it, and the little button-keyed accordion that is still to this day so popular in the Scottish Highlands. She could sing too, and knew by heart most of the Gaelic songs shared by the folks of the Highlands and Islands. These days they had acquired a radio and in the evenings could listen not only to the music of the Gaels but also to the modern popular songs of the time. Christina knew all the latest hits, who sang them, and which films they were from. This was her escape, a chance to dream and imagine herself in the arms of Gene Kelly, Astaire or Crosby dancing into a blue horizon.

Christina wasn’t beautiful but she was quite pretty, small and petite with brown wavy hair and a shy smile. On the rare occasion that she smiled! Today was not such a day. It was now well into the evening and both herself and her mother were still slogging away at a heavier than usual load of washing. The radio was turned up loud and playing a selection of “rag-time”. Christina sang along as she hauled washing out of the old stone sink and into a long enamelled basin. Her mind was floating somewhere across the Pacific on a paradise island when in stormed her father and snapped off the radio. Always a selfish man, he had become quite cantankerous since retiring.

“Who’s listening to that damn row? It’s not even music. I can’t read the paper for the noise.”

“I’m listening to it, Daddy. While you’re reading your paper I’m working, cleaning the cach of other people’s clothes. So here! Why don’t you do it?”

She hauled the last of the articles from the sink and hurled them at her father. He ducked as soaking wet knickers flew across the kitchen but too slow to miss the main force of the soggy mass.

“How dare you child. How dare you have the impudence to throw these dirty wet things at your father!”

“I’m not a child, I’m not even a woman. I’m a slave here. And these things are not dirty. I’ve just spent the last hour washing them while you’re reading your precious newspaper. What does Mr. Chamberlain have to say today? I don’t suppose he’s planning to abolish slavery in the Scottish Highlands.”

Jessie came in to see what was causing the row. She had heard the music stop suddenly, so she quickly took in the scene and realised what had happened.

“Oh, Donald, let her listen to the music. It’s the only pleasure she gets.”

She turned the radio back on but with the volume lower. Donald didn’t answer. He just slid off back to the sitting room, wet and uncomfortable, licking the wounds from his daughter’s attack.

In the kitchen Christina’s frustration gave way to a flood of tears and her mother put a comforting arm round her.

“Don’t cry Teenie. Things will be all right. You’re a good girl to me and your father.” She laughed, “Some day I’ll dance at your wedding.” This was always Jessie’s promise when she had no more concrete reward to offer.

“Dance at my wedding! What wedding? Who’s going to find me in this God forsaken place? I’m twenty-one years old and I’ve never so much as danced with a man. And don’t always call me Teenie. My name’s Christina. You know Mother. I work here every day. I never go out. I never go anywhere. I never see anybody. The only pleasure I have is listening to the rest of the world on the radio and Daddy comes and turns it off.”

“Your sister Lisac is coming home for the weekend. Why don’t the two of you go to the dance in the village? I believe they have a band from Mull coming to play. I think it’s Duncan Russell.”

“I haven’t got anything to wear.”

“That’s not true, Teenie. You have a wardrobe full of things.”

In the 1930s the fashion emporium of the Highlands was the catalogue of “J.D. Williams” from Manchester. Christina was a regular customer and had a good wardrobe of up-to-date clothes. The problem was she didn’t have much opportunity to wear them. Perhaps her mother was right. Why not go to the dance? She had nothing to lose and Lisac liked dancing too. She turned up the radio, which by now was playing popular songs. She started to sing along with Hammerstein’s “When I grow too old to dream.” To her surprise her mother joined in:

“When I grow too old to dream

I’ll have you to remember

When I grow too old to dream

Your love will live in my heart.”

They began waltzing round the kitchen singing together

“So kiss me my sweet

And then let us part

So that when I grow too old to dream

That kiss will live in my heart.”

They whirled around and Jessie’s foot caught in the knickers that Teenie had thrown at her father. They broke apart laughing with Jessie now beginning to puff from her asthma so she had to sit down and her daughter went back to the delights of the washing.

“That kiss will remain in my heart”, continued the radio.

By Friday the rains had cleared away and Christina was in jovial mood as she walked to the station to meet her sister. She liked when Lisac came home. The two were very close and tended to like the same things. Lisac was much more religious and very prim in her outlook but she always had some story to tell of life in the big city. This time was no different. They took turns to carry Lisac’s little case as they talked, laughed and joked on the way back to Baravullin.

Teenie screamed with laughter as her sister embarrassedly retold her encounter with a “flasher” on her way home from work outside the hospital. The man was quite well known by the young nurses. It seemed he waited regularly near the main entrance of the hospital and jumped out with his manhood exposed. Just two nights ago Lisac was the victim.

“What did it look like? What did you do? What did you say? Did you not scream?” the questions poured out without time to respond.

“I don’t know. I didn’t look. I just told him to go away that I wasn’t interested.”

“And what did he do?”

“He went away.”

“Do you want to go to the dance tonight? ” asked Teenie, changing the subject, “there’s a band coming from Mull.”

“OK as long as there’s no men in dirty raincoats.”

There was a break in the trees at this point and Lisac caught sight of the beach.

“I’m going to paddle in the sea,” she declared.

The two girls ran to the beach, dropped the suitcase in the sand and with their skirts hauled up over their knees they kicked off their shoes and splashed through the water. Nowadays Trallee Bay has a big caravan site and in summer has hundreds of people playing and swimming but that day in 1937 the beach belonged to the two MacKenzie sisters.

They had come here many times across the years, sometimes with their older sister Katy, sometimes with the boys who took sharp ended sticks and went catching flounders, the lazy flat fish that loll around in coastal waters. Their father had a little rowing boat that lay on the shore. He caught herring and on a good year would store them in salt in a barrel at the back door of the house. But today the two sisters were escaping as they frolicked together in the shallow water. Lisac was escaping from the city soot and the hard regime of the hospital while Teenie was enjoying some respite from the humdrum of domestic drudgery.

With their skirt bottoms soaked and their shoes in their hand they walked the rest of the way barefoot and arrived laughing and chirping at the door where Jessie stood waiting for them. She was pleased to see her younger daughter happy again. Their brother Calum was there too. He was in the kitchen ironing his shirt for going to the dance. He always made Teenie feel good because although about ten years older than her he was still single too, but he liked the dances and so now they had an escort to take them to the hall.

The dance went well. The band from the island of Mull was one of the best Scottish dance bands at the time. They were often on the radio so there was a good turn out to see them in the flesh. They didn’t disappoint the crowd swirling through “Eightsome Reel”, “Gay Gordons”, “Dashing White Sergeant”, “Highland Schottische” and various two-steps, jigs and waltzes. Both sisters were asked up for most of the dances and Teenie had attracted the attentions of Jimmie Oliphant. Jimmie was the driver of a travelling shop. He was about forty years old and although he was a good dancer he was not very good looking and nothing like the lad she dreamed of meeting. She tried without success to shake him off and when it came time for the “ladies choice” she grabbed her brother Calum in order to escape. Just as Calum turned round to dance with her she noticed the man he was talking to. Now there was the man for her! Slim, a little taller than herself, nicely trimmed fair hair, blue eyes that sparkled mischievously, neatly dressed and with a quiet air of confidence. She took in all this at a glance as Calum whisked her away and into an old fashioned waltz.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“Who’s what?” answered Calum unconcernedly.

“The man you were talking to.”

“Oh him, that’s Ian, Ian Black from Barcaldine.”

Why couldn’t he ask her to dance instead of podgy old Jimmie Oliphant? But he didn’t seem to be dancing with anyone. He was just one of the lads enjoying the Highland music.

Brother and sister did a round of the dance floor. Calum was a good dancer and Teenie was starting to enjoy the dance when suddenly they came face to face again with Ian. Without breaking rhythm Calum loosened his grip on Teenie and passed her to Ian.

“Ian, this is my sister Christina,” he said as the music carried the newly- formed couple into the swirl of the waltz. The band had changed from old Scottish waltz into a medley of popular songs.

“When I grow too old to dream, your kiss will remain in my heart.” Everybody joined in the chorus. The dance came to an end and Christina reluctantly let go of her newfound partner.

“Yes. He would be nice to kiss,” she thought as she walked back towards her sister.

11. THERE WILL BE NO WAR IN EUROPE

Benderloch, 1938

In 1938 Ian was still enjoying life in Barcaldine. Neville Chamberlain was placating Hitler, promising the people of Britain that there would be “peace in our time” and that there would be no war in Europe. Adolph Hitler was promising that he would be content with just a small part of Czechoslovakia. Winston Churchill was desperately trying to convince everybody of a “gathering storm”. Somebody, somewhere must have decided to listen to Churchill’s stormy words because despite the assurances of calm, army recruitment teams were scurrying around the country beating the drum and looking for young men daft enough to join the Territorial Army. In the Scottish Highlands there is never any shortage of men daft enough to fight the dragon. It’s the measure of a man’s dignity.

Thousands of Highlanders willingly signed on. Not the young men; their turn would come later. The main body of recruitment was among the thirty-year-olds. Perhaps shinty, football and dancing had become boring. Perhaps it was a sense of duty, maybe a desire for some adventure. Ian Black, aged thirty-two, the quiet recluse, lover of nature, signed on to be a soldier. So did Calum MacKenzie. So also, did most of the unmarried men in Argyll and quite a few of the married ones. They answered the call of the beating drum.

Of course it was all just a game, another weekend pastime. There wasn’t going to be a war. They had a train trip every Saturday afternoon into the drill hall in Oban and a couple of full weekend training camps, marching, drilling, map reading, weapons training, all good fun and a few “drams” in the pub when they’d finished. In fact they had no weapons to train with, uniforms were slow to arrive and there were few experienced soldiers to instruct in the marching and training. The small remuneration they received paid for the drinks and everybody had a good time in the TA.

Calum and Ian continued their friendship; the ceilidh invitation was repeated and this time accepted. One Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1938 Ian tied his fiddle on the back of his bicycle and set off to look for Baravullin cottage. Christina was forewarned so her wellington boots, apron and headscarf were discarded in favour of a summer frock and light shoes. She was delighted when she heard he was coming to the house and when he arrived was in the kitchen helping her mother prepare scones and tea.

During the afternoon other members of the family arrived, Calum and George, who was now also a telephone engineer, with his wife Annie and two children and Kenny, just back from Jamaica. Like Calum had suggested, they had a good old Highland ceilidh. Donald, the father set the mood with a few march tunes on his chanter. Calum played some tunes on the accordion and was joined in the vocals by Christina and Annie. George and Kenny decided it was time for the bagpipes but their father insisted they go out to the garden.

“You’ll deafen us all if you both play in here,” he said.

So everyone went outside for the skirl of the pipes and the concert continued in the warm summer evening with George trying to prove he was better than the professional piper and Kenny intentionally skipping a couple of quavers to let his brother have the edge.

“Well, Ian Black. Are you going to keep that fiddle tied to the bike all day or are we going to hear you play something?” challenged George.

So Ian unstrapped the violin and played a couple of tunes.

“Do you know Sweet Rothesay Bay?” he asked Calum.

Calum nodded and they played together for a while until Christina took the accordion and continued the duet.

Time for tea and scones and the conversation inevitably turned to Hitler and Chamberlain.

“Aye they speak about peace but I don’t think the little painter is going to stop as easily as they say. I think war’s not far away. We’ll have to stop him,” said George.

“Well, don’t bother thinking that you’re going to stop him, George MacKenzie,” declared his wife Annie, “You’ve got a wife and kids to look after.”

“What about you, Kenny?” asked Ian. “Will you get called up again or is your time finished?”

“Oh, I’m still on the reserve list but I don’t think I’ll go back in the Argyll’s.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like the Campbell tartan?” joked Calum.

“Ach no, just time for a change,” replied his brother.

“No need for you to go at all,” said Donald the father, “There will be plenty to do around the croft here.”

“Hah, it’s not a croft, just a garden. You’ll manage fine without me.”

“Anyway, it’s time for another tune,” said George, sensing the tension, “Come on Teenie. Where’s your mouth organ?”

Christina winced noticeably at the use of her pet name, Teenie, but she did as she was bid and produced a harmonica. Kenny slipped away to put his bagpipes inside and avoid further confrontation with his father. His mother, Jessie, followed him in. She was enjoying the evening although she herself didn’t have enough breath to join in the singing but she hated when Kenny and his father disagreed. A few minutes later George and Annie announced it was time to head home with the kids. If they went now they could catch a train back to Barcaldine. Calum decided that himself and Kenny and Ian had time to cycle to North Connel for a drink before the bar closed.

Christina caught Ian before he left and suggested he come back again.

“Calum says you’re a handyman. You could come and fix our peat barrow. The wheel is falling off.”

“Aye. We’ve got the TA camp next week. I’ll come the week after that if you promise more scones.”

At the age of thirty-two Ian Black had become a soldier and found himself a girlfriend. He came back to fix the wheel of the barrow and in the next year found several excuses to come back to Baravullin. In the summer of 1939 he came and helped Christina cut the winter peat. He had started calling her Teenie like the rest of the family but she didn’t mind so much. It sounded affectionate.

12. TOMORROW I’LL BE SOBER

Argyllshire, 1st September 1939

Most of the older generation in Scotland remember the 1st of September 1939. Just two days before the outbreak of war and with the rather inconsequential code name “Clive”, came the order for the mobilisation of the 8th Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and with them many other reserve regiments across the United Kingdom. It was a Friday and it seemed appropriate that these “weekend” soldiers should start their expedition at the weekend. Ian Black was one of those called up along with other Barcaldine Territorials, Duncan Ferguson, Shonan MacDonald, Farquar MacNeil, and Alistair Campbell. From the MacKenzie family in Benderloch, Kenny went into the Gordon Highlanders and Calum went first to the Argylls as a Territorial then with his telephone experience changed to the Royal Corp of Signals. From further north sister Katy’s husband Gillies went into the Seaforth Highlanders. The family were about to wave goodbye to four of their menfolk and that is how it was for most Highland families. That is how it has been for many centuries. They were not young lads, all of them over thirty years of age, but they were reservists so they went before the first wave of conscription.

But don’t imagine they were prepared in any way for war. They were not soldiers. Some still didn’t have uniforms and some had never handled a rifle. Even Kenny MacKenzie, with nearly twenty years experience, was a piper, not a fighting soldier. Nothing much had really changed since the “Gathering of the Clans” for the Jacobite Rebellion. And yet in this motley bunch of foresters, gardeners, shepherds and farmers one thing had changed over the years. Campbells, MacDonalds and Stewarts now marched together, side by side, as British soldiers.

The 8th Argylls, “C” Company assembled in the Drill Hall in Drumvargie Terrace in Oban. The full regiment was supposed to assemble in Dunoon, South Argyll on Sunday the 3rd but 76 men of the battalion had to come from the Island of Mull and they had to wait 24 hours while MacBrayne’s Steamship Company observed God’s holy day. The Oban men were sent back home for Friday night, an opportunity to say some farewells to family and friends and an equally fond “beannachd leat” to the “Lochnell Arms” bar in North Connel. It all had an air of “Dad’s Army” farce.

Ian went home to Barcaldine to see his aunt and then visited Baravullin to see Christina one more time before leaving. Their friendship had grown in the last few months. She wasn’t at home when he arrived but was at the peat moss gathering in the slabs of peat that had dried in the summer months and was taking them to the barn at the side of the house. Her young cousin, Nicky, was helping her load the barrow that Ian had fixed the summer before. Nicky waved when he saw Ian approach and Teenie put down the heavy barrow. She was wearing an oversize pair of her brother’s wellington boots and her hair was tied back with an old headscarf. Despite her dishevelled state she was pleased to see him again before he went away. He took over the barrow and wheeled it towards the house.

Teenie kicked off the wellingtons and went to wash her hands and make some tea. Sounds of harsh voices were coming from the sitting room — two men arguing — mostly in Gaelic — father and son. Donald, the father was obviously unhappy that Kenny had signed up so quickly to go away, but it wasn’t sadness at his eldest son going off to war. He wanted Kenny to stay and help tend the croft. But the last year or so had not been easy since he came back from Jamaica. The eldest son was a free spirit, willing to buckle down to army discipline but not to jump at the command of his father. Things would be better all round if he were away again and besides it was time to try his hand at real soldiering, to lay aside the bagpipes and fight a few battles. He had signed on with the Gordons and was going to Inverurie the next day. Poor Jessie, the mother was crying. She thought her eldest and dearest son had come home to stay. He didn’t have to go — he had done his share — he was thirty-five years old — time to stay home from the wars. But she was luckier than many, two sons going to war and two staying home. George and Iain were married with young families and were not in the Territorial Army so they would not be called. George would have liked to be going too but Annie convinced him he was too old. Although he didn’t like to admit it, a childhood illness had left him unfit for military service.

As Ian Black and Teenie entered the sitting room Kenny kissed his mother on the cheek, threw a kit bag on his shoulder and walked out. At the door he turned toward his father.

“Goodbye, Father,” he said and marched away.

Young Nicky stayed out of the way in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. He buttered some scones and then called Teenie when the kettle was ready. They sat sombrely with their tea and scones while a tenseness hung in the room. Nobody spoke until the lad suggested that Teenie get out the accordion and play some tunes but she declined. It didn’t seem appropriate.

There was a shuffle at the door and in came Calum, singing his head off, his uniform unbuttoned with his kit bag in one hand and a whisky bottle in the other.

“Ian Black! I thought you had gone to France. Here have a drink! But leave some for the bodach, Eh, old man you’ll want a drink too. Won’t you?” he asked his father and reeled over, still clutching the bottle, sat down on his sister’s knee and put an arm round her neck.

“Come on Teenie! Smile, smile, smile!”

“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag

And smile, smile, smile!”

He slurred the words of the old wartime song.

“Teenie, why don’t you go and get the accordion?”

“Because you’re sitting on top of me.” She pushed him off and went to the room for the accordion.

“You play it,” she said, taking the whisky from him, “It’ll stop you drinking any more.” She went to fetch two glasses for Ian and her father.

As a general rule alcohol dulls the senses but with a Highlander and his music it fires the spirit. Calum stood up straight as a rod and gave them a selection of pipe march tunes while around the room several feet tapped the floor in time. Soon the chill had left the room and Baravullin enjoyed the last family ceilidh it would see for many years. Ian didn’t have his fiddle but he sang a couple of songs accompanied by Teenie on harmonica. Then Calum announced it was time to go so with a few kisses, some mother’s hugs and father’s handshakes the two soldiers set off back to Oban. At the door Ian stopped for a last moment with Christina.

“Will you do something for me when I’m away? Will you go and see my father any time you’re in Oban? He’s in the Highland Rest Home not keeping too well.”

“All right’” agreed Teenie.

A quick hug, a brief kiss and the two soldiers marched away, kitbags across their shoulders.

“Take care, boys,” Teenie whispered to herself as her brother and boyfriend strode down the lane.

They didn’t say much on the road to the station, each silently taking his leave of this pleasant landscape, the soft moors and fields rolling down to the bay. This flat wooded heath-land wedged between mountains, the heather shining bright purple and the bracken already turned gold by the summer sun. A land to come home to.

Needless to say the trip back to military service involved a visit to the bar in North Connel, a few drinks and another farewell to old friends. They missed the last train and had to cross the bridge on foot hoping to catch the late train from Glasgow. Luck was on their side — it had been delayed a few minutes by some sheep on the track. Calum and Ian jumped on, hauling their kit bags behind them. As they pushed their way into a compartment Calum’s foot caught the foot of a rather prim lady sitting next to the door.

“You’re drunk!” she said scornfully.

Calum steadied himself and turned slowly to face the aggressor.

“Yes, my dear, I’m drunk,” he concurred, “and you’re an ugly old cow.”

He tottered a little as he continued.

“And in the morning I’ll be sober, and you’ll still be an ugly old cow. Come on Ian!” He threw his kit bag up to his shoulder and went off in search of another compartment.

In Oban they sobered a little as they climbed the hill to the drill hall. Tomorrow they would be sober. On Sunday 3rd of September Neville Chamberlain addressed the nation by radio. While MacBrayne’s considered it inappropriate to sail ships on God’s day the British government saw no harm in declaring war. A sobering thought indeed, more so had they known that around the world this act of righteous indignation was about to cost some fifty million lives. Nevertheless all the “Terriers” now knew that the weekend games were over. This was for real!

13. SOLDIERS OF THE KING

Scotland-England-France, September 1939 to May 1940

On Monday 4th September, with MacBrayne’s steamers back in service and Britain waking up to the prospect of war, the “Muileachs” crossed over and the other lads marched down from the Drill Hall to the station. From there by train to Whistlefield, an old station on the West Highland line, and then with a short trip in army trucks the 8th Argylls began to assemble in the West of Scotland Convalescent Home in Dunoon. It is not clear what happened to the patients who had previously occupied the hospital but military matters took precedence. The battalion totalled some thousand men, “A” company from Kintyre in the south, “B” from Mid-Argyll and Islay, “C” from Oban, Lorne and Mull, and “D” from Dunoon and the east towards Glasgow. Commanding these men were 34 officers led by Lt-Col G.C. Campbell. Seven of the officers were Campbells as one might expect in Argyll but there were also two Stewarts and even one MacDonald. Only two were regular soldiers, the Quartermaster Captain H.G. Campbell and the Adjutant Captain A. Campbell.

This raggle-taggle bunch of untrained, ill-equipped men had to prepare in just a few short months for front-line combat. With half the men still in civilian clothes and broomsticks for rifles the training and platoon formation started immediately. Most of the men from Barcaldine and Ballachulish, including Ian Black, had been among the first to join the Territorial Army so they had kilts and dress jackets. Many others had to parade in their best Sunday suits with felt hat or tweed cap. At this point rifles were not available for general issue and they took turns learning to shoot on the rifle range while the remainder were square bashing in a make shift parade ground or out on route marches across the hills behind Dunoon.

Their only measure of dignity came from the Pipe Band, one of the best in Scotland under the Pipe Major Nicol MacCalum. The motley bunch of men didn’t look like a Highland regiment but with a pipe band ringing in their ears they could at least feel like one especially when at the end of September they sailed to Gourock to catch a train south to the training camps at Aldershot and Maida Barracks. They had one month more to wait before everyone was fully kitted out in battledress uniform. A decision had been taken that throughout the Scottish regiments the kilt would cease to be in service due to its impracticality in modern warfare. At first this was considered an English imposition but as serious training got under way it was quickly accepted as just common sense. Besides it was Campbell tartan so most from North Argyll were secretly pleased.

From October to Christmas they drilled, marched and learned “the arts of war”. The battalion was reshuffled substantially as men’s fitness, or lack of it, became obvious. About one hundred dropped out for lighter duties and a large group were sectioned off to form the base of another battalion. Men were selected for special duties according to any abilities and skills they had. At this point Ian and Calum parted company as the latter was transferred to the Royal Corps of Signals. Six years would pass before they met again, but their friendship would endure, six years and many more.

A Headquarter Company was formed to take charge of stores, distribution, administration and catering with Captain John Kenneth in charge. “A” Company had Captain John MacDonald, “B” Company had Major Frank Ingham-Clark, and “D” Company was under Captain Paul Stress. Ian Black’s commander in “C” Company was John Inglis, recently made up from Lieutenant. He fussed a lot cajoling his band of hill-folk, trying to make them into soldiers although he himself was still learning too and earned the nickname “Aunty Inglis”. Ian’s platoon commander was Bruce Cheape one of the youngest Lieutenants at that time. With the reductions and reshuffling of personnel a lot of lads from Central Scotland were brought into the battalion so that as they began to mould into a fighting unit, more than half of this “Highland” force were in fact Lowlanders.

There was another very young officer whose function was not clear so he took it upon himself to sharpen up attention on night patrol duty. His habit was to creep up quietly on the unsuspecting soldier and take away his rifle. The poor culprit then received punishment duties. It had happened a few times so when it was Ian’s turn he was prepared. He was patrolling the perimeter fence one cold foggy night and sensed more than heard someone creeping up from behind. He resisted the temptation to turn too soon and waited till the officer was just behind. He swung round on his back heel and called the requisite “Halt. Who goes there?” In doing so he brought his rifle round sharply and his bayonet removed the lapel of his officers coat.

“Well, well…Jolly good… Good Heavens,” stuttered the officer. “The Jerries aren’t going to catch you sleeping. Are they? What? Yes. Jolly good!”

Ian expected a serious reprimand but never heard any more of the incident nor of any more unsuspecting soldiers getting “jankers” for losing their rifles.

Christmas arrived and the battalion was served Christmas dinner by the officers and then everyone was sent home on leave for ten days to enjoy a last New Year in Scotland before real active service. By now each soldier had a uniform that fitted, more or less, and a Lee Enfield rifle of the type used in WW1, complete with bayonet. Live ammunition was still not on general issue. But when they arrived back in Argyll they looked and felt a little less like “Dad’s Army”.

But their state of preparedness was critically weak. Their crash-training programme was based on old methods of war and they were going to forestall Hitler’s new “blitzkrieg” conquering style. Apart from rifles and grenades each company had several Bren machine guns mounted on tracked vehicles but they were slow to arrive during training so the operators had little time to prepare. With the turn of the year command of the battalion changed from Lt. Col. George Campbell to Lt.Col. D. J. Grant. All of the regiments were torn apart and reformed in this way as high command struggled desperately to mould together this rapidly deployed force with an adequate mix of experience. On the 18th of January they had a last opportunity to wear the kilt as they stood in the perishing cold wind to be inspected by the King. Afterwards the kilts were taken into store, even from the pipers. Two weeks later they climbed aboard two trains heading for Southampton to sail for Le Havre.

Next day, when they arrived in France, there was no hero’s welcome. France and her troops were even less prepared for this war that they had reluctantly declared back in September, than were the British. The weather was bitterly cold and so was the reception. They arrived at 10.30 in the morning and they waited all day for a train to take them to their first billet near Bolbec, twenty miles away. The last few miles were on foot with full pack and greatcoat through rain, slush and snow to spend their first night in an old barn. The guides were not too sure of the way so there were a couple of “about turns” along the way.

After a week of digging latrines they bundled into two trains of cattle trucks with straw on the floor and six cold, hard hours later they arrived at Sainghin near Lille. Here they were more welcome. The accommodation was better and the local people friendly. The weather improved and there was some opportunity for training and for the officers to get a feel for the task of commanding a unit. In place of the cold barn they now occupied the local school. Duty rosters were put in place and when off-duty the Highlanders converged, naturally, on the two local bars.

No Dewars or Glen Grant on sale here but the wine and cognac were good and the French beer better than the tea back at the billet. Their small army pay went a long way when converted into Francs and this ensured a warm welcome from the landlord. Some futile attempts were made by the Sergeant Major to control the drinking binges but the daytime routine was boring and at night there was nothing else to do. One night, in response to a challenge, Ian tried a shot from every bottle along the shelf of the bar. Severe vomiting saved him from alcohol poisoning and next morning saw a very sick man on parade.

A few days later they had an afternoon free. A group of lads went into the village to find some real food. The field kitchen meals were soup, bully-beef and dog biscuits. With the typical mix of English, Gaelic, hand gestures and “s’il vous plait” they managed to buy some fruit, cakes and some nice French chocolate. Shonan MacDonald decided that he would like some real steak so they found a “boucherie”. The girl behind the counter had no idea what he wanted. Hand gestures only confounded the situation more. Shonan got down on his knees, stuck two fingers out the top of his head and said “Moo, moo, moo,” and then started the actions of milking a cow. The poor girl thought he was looking for some strange sex adventures and went screaming off to find her father. Just at that moment Colonel Grant went by and witnessed the commotion.

He strode into the shop, whacked Shonan across the backside with his cane and snapped, “What in God’s name are you doing soldier? Have you any idea how stupid you look? We’re trying to impress these people that we’ve come to help them win a war. Tidy yourself up man and get back to barracks.”

The afternoon shopping trip was over. Shonan never got his steak.

At the end of March they moved north just twenty-five miles and then on the 16th of April they moved up to Metz towards the Maginot Line. There were in fact four lines and troops were rotated on a regular basis between the front line of enemy contact and the subsequent three lines of support. However real contact with the Germans was minimal. Some enemy night time patrols came to harass the forward entrenchments but there were not many injuries and the main effect was to keep our patrols awake all night.

Ian’s battalion moved up to the line of contact on the 3rd of May and stayed for six days. The week before they had been issued ammunition and ordered to load for the first time. They were now right up at the German border near Grossenwald and the surrounding countryside was beautiful, rolling fields and flourishing beech woods, springtime blossom and nightingales singing. Nature continued its cycle oblivious to the noisy frenetic manoeuvres of man at war. All the villages had been evacuated and an eerie sense of peace prevailed despite the occasional rattle of gunfire. On day six the 1st Black Watch moved up to relieve them around the time that the main German push was beginning into Holland. The Argylls moved back to dig in on the rearmost line of defence, the Ligne d’Arret, when they had been hoping for a few days rest. The formal structure of this line had never been established effectively so trenches had to be dug with each move of position.

Then on the 14th of May, the day after Holland collapsed, the battalion moved forward again this time to the second line. There followed two weeks of moving forward then back, frequent digging, occasional shelling, lots of nights without sleep, infrequent meals and a general feeling of confusion and uncertainty. They remained unaware of the total collapse of the British Expeditionary Force and its hasty withdrawal at Dunkirk. Neither did they know that the German army had punched through the Belgian lines of defence and were now solidly into France although there were whispers of them pushing north in attack mode supposedly to penetrate the German corridor around Dunkirk.

They marched forward and waited two nights. This forward push was abandoned and they learned that instead they were going on a circuitous route round Paris to come up in the west at the Somme. The whole operation seemed to be breaking up in confusion. This was confirmed when their rail journey around Paris took two days. A bombed ammunition train was blocking railway lines south of Paris. German planes were reaching well into French territory and causing extensive disruption. Eventually they arrived at Rouen, not so far from where they had started in February. In these four months they had done lots of soldiering but not seen much of the fighting. However the constant moving and obvious lack of coherent orders coupled with the lack of sleep and food were beginning to wear down not just this battalion but the whole of the 51st Division.

Unbeknown even to the senior officers they had become a pawn in Churchill’s game of “keep the war alive”. The Germans had stopped short of Dunkirk allowing Gort the British commander to make his famous evacuation. The French high command were indicating that they were not prepared to enter a protracted battle around Paris. Yet the British high command brought the 51st Division into a defensive formation in support of a line that the French were unlikely to defend with any vigour. Why was this done? This has been the subject of controversy ever since but for the lads from Argyll it was just another bit of battle blunder.

By the time they reached Rouen everybody was desperately hungry but they had to stay on the train awaiting orders. They sequestered the contents of a wagon of rations that had become stuck in a nearby railway siding, cheese, bully-beef and biscuits. Had they known what lay ahead they might have stuffed a few cheeses in their kitbags. In the afternoon they eventually got off the train and marched a few miles to where a convoy of buses was waiting to take them to Breuilly on the river Bresle. Next day they marched in the direction of the Somme taking up positions a few miles south of the town of St. Valery-sur-somme. Both at St. Valery and to the southeast at Abbeville the German advance had established bridgeheads.

At Abbeville the regular more experienced battalions were preparing for an attack on the German forward positions. On the 28th, just a few days before, General Charles de Gaulle had mustered an attempt with the French 4th Armoured Division and despite initial success had not dislodged the German bridgehead. On the 3rd of June it was to be the turn of the Highlanders. However the co-ordination between British and French commands was sluggish and the attack was postponed to the 4th. On this same day Churchill stood before Parliament and delivered his ever-famous speech “We will fight them on the beaches….”

14. ROSES OF PICARDIE

Friville-Escarbotin-Belloy, June 1940

This is Picardie and the roses are shining just like in the song, wild yellow roses in large bushes by the roadside. A kestrel is hovering, its wings flickering gently as it prepares to pounce on its prey in the field below. Some cows graze peacefully with a backdrop of a wooded copse behind which nestles the Chateau of Belloy. About a mile to the northwest on the road to St. Blimont is the public cemetery. If you look carefully you will find in the far end of this cemetery a neatly tended row of light grey headstones, ten in number, all matching. On seven of these stones you will find a Scottish name and underneath “8th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders”. The remaining three carry the inscription, “Known only unto God”. We know the names: we just have to guess which is which. All died in June 1940.

If you have time or indeed the desire to wander in the villages of St. Blimont, Pende, Bailly-en-Riviere, Cayeux-sur-mer, Veulerres-sur-mer, St. Ever, St. Riquier, St. Valery-sur-Somme, Lancheres, Inchville, Escoublac, Grandcourt and St. Hilaire, here you will find in total thirty more 8th Argylls. At Dunkirk you will find ten more, strange you may think, because in life they were never near Dunkirk. Between the 5th of June and the 7th of June 1940 there were fifty 8th Argylls who fell in Picardie.

The battalion, as already seen, was thrown together hastily. The seams were sewn with tacking stitches; just a few experienced soldiers borrowed from other battalions or other regiments to hold together the platoons. The officers, while highly motivated, lacked experience in tactics and in leadership under pressure. And so when the decision was made to attack the German bridgehead at Abbeville the 8th Argylls were well back from the front line. Colonel Grant wanted to attack the bridgehead at St. Valery but this was turned down in order to concentrate minds and wills on Abbeville.

In spearhead position were the 1st Gordons. Kenny MacKenzie was about to have his taste of “real soldiering”. Behind and on the flanks were 2nd and 4th Seaforths, 5th Gordons, and 4th Camerons. This in essence was 153 Brigade and at their backs they had five battalions of artillery and two machine-gun battalions. Air support was piecemeal and without radio contact. Back between the Somme and the Bresle was 154 Brigade, which included 8th Argylls, straggled from the coast to near Amiens, trying to hold a defence line that required five times the numbers that they had.

Here, the elite of Britain’s best division was readying for battle in a bid to stop the Nazi march across Europe. They didn’t know they were just pawns in a game. They didn’t know that, no-matter how hard they fought, they would never win. Rommel and friends had stopped for a rest after encircling Dunkirk. They let more than three hundred thousand troops go home. They were saving their strength and fire power for the push south to take Paris from the western side.

So on the morning of 4th June as the 51st Division were set for their punitive punch at Abbeville the German offensive moved into top gear with “Fall Rot”, Operation Red.

Unaware of the massive build up of enemy forces, at 3.20 a.m. on the 4th the British assault began under the command of General Fortune. They pounded the German positions with all available artillery and as morning broke the infantry battalions moved forward. They began to take their objectives albeit with incredible losses. Around mid-morning they started to founder as the bravery of the Scottish troops was repeatedly undercut by the bungling incompetence of the French. Supporting tank units arrived late or didn’t arrive at all or in one case arrived with the wrong calibre ammunition. A French aerial bombardment went astray and bombed B Company of the 4th Camerons. But most critically the French troops that were in support, guarding the flanks of the Highlanders, began to abandon their positions.

By mid-day Fortune knew that the attack had ground to a halt. Hundreds of bodies from both armies lay bloating in the heat of the afternoon sun. A second attempt was planned but soon abandoned. The advance halted and hasty moves were set in motion to reform in defensive positions and begin a retreat to the River Bresle.

That afternoon as Churchill stood proclaiming, “The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their common cause, will defend to the death their native soils”, he knew in his heart that these were mute words. So many of the men who fought to the death that day, and in the preceding two weeks, failed to benefit from this “common link”.

On the 5th of June C Company, 8th Argylls were in position around the small town of St. Blimont. One platoon was forward in the small village of Pende and Ian’s platoon under Lt. Bruce Cheape was in a wooded copse near the village of Tilloy just south of St.Valery-sur-Somme. To the north were one hundred and four divisions of the German army. The wings of the eagle fluttered on the flags of the 3rd Reich waiting to pounce like the kestrel above the field at Belloy. With their route blocked at Abbeville they rolled south via their bridgehead at St Valery. As this took place the 7th and 8th Argylls who had been held back from the front line the day before, now, suddenly, became the front line.

At Tilloy the lead tanks were not boasting their flags. They edged forward behind a camouflage of poplar branches. Ian Black, with keen sniper’s eye, could see clearly over a mile and spotted the movement. He called to Bruce Cheape nearby.

“Sir. There are tanks moving up from that wood across there.”

“Hah,” Cheape chuckled, “Private Black. You’ve been tasting everything on the shelf of the bar again. How would you know a German tank? You’ve never seen one.”

“I’ve seen a lot of trees, Sir, and they don’t move twenty yards every minute.”

The officer didn’t have time to answer. The cornfields around them began to dance as shells rained in on them. The first formations of advancing infantry started to become visible above the waist-high corn. At this point they still had telephone contact and called in artillery support. Mortar ripped through the advancing columns and Ian shuddered as he watched the tanks roll on over dead and dying soldiers. Suddenly the games were over. This was war. The platoon held ground for a short time picking off the hapless souls who advanced in full line of fire. Then with another burst of support from the big guns they pulled back to St. Blimont. On the right flank, to the east, most of the 7th Argylls became encircled and with rising casualties they surrendered. Over five hundred officers and men killed or taken prisoner. A decision was made to consolidate at the River Bresle. The big guns pulled back and companies A, B and HQ started to reform further south.

A few miles to the north, in the cornfields at Pende, 14 Platoon were fighting German cavalry. They brought down a mounted patrol and took one injured officer prisoner. With a more intensive enemy onslaught they retreated to St. Blimont to the headquarters and the prisoner was passed over to the retreating members of the Battalion.

By afternoon Jimmy Mellor’s Oban men and Bruce Cheape’s Lorne lads had fought and pulled back until they were in the woods and fields in front of the Chateau of Belloy just to the west of the village of Escarbotin. This village was under the guard of D Company 7th Argylls, who despite heavy attacks had still held out. By evening those who hadn’t been killed or captured were falling back leaving the men at Belloy seriously exposed. Between Escarbotin and Belloy, a space of less than two miles, were D Company of the 8th Battalion, the men from Dunoon area. They came under cripplingly heavy fire and they too fell back on Belloy.

War is a strange animal. We tend to see it in abstract: something detached from reality. And yet it superimposes itself on reality. Life must continue in some form. The population of Belloy-Friville-Escarbotin had been evacuated, most needing little persuasion as the guns rumbled closer. And then about half an hour before the real shooting started two civilians appeared knocking on the door of the Chateau Belloy.

“Who are you? What do you want?” asked Captain Inglis with natural suspicion.

“My name is MacKenzie from Kilwinning. I am married to the daughter of the Mayor of Abbeville. We have come to rescue the bible before the Germans get it,” came the implausible response.

Who were these two? What did they really want? Were they German spies?

“What bible?” asked John Inglis “I don’t understand why anyone needs a bible except maybe ourselves at this moment. Please explain yourselves and quickly please.”

“ My name, as I said, is MacKenzie. I have a garage in Abbeville and I am the husband of the Mayor’s daughter. We have come to rescue a bible that is in the Chateau. It’s valuable and important to the people of Abbeville. It’s over a thousand years old from the time of Charlemagne. We don’t want it to be plundered by the Germans. And I am, as I said, from Kilwinning.”

“Tell me some of the lawyers in Kilwinning, then,” demanded Inglis.

MacKenzie thought for a moment, and then named the lawyers of Kilwinning to the satisfaction of Captain Inglis.

“OK you seem to be genuine. Get in quickly and take your bible but hurry it up. There’s going to be a battle soon. I don’t suppose you’d like to join the Argyll’s. We could do with some more men.”

“I did my bit in the last one, Sir. But I wish you well. God be with you.”

“I’d much rather the artillery was with me, but thanks anyway.”

The two men departed with their bible.

The battle intensified around the fields of Belloy.

Around 10 p.m. Captain Inglis had both 14 and 15 platoon at Belloy and also what was left of D Company. A number had been killed and quite a few injured, some had been taken prisoner. Aware of the dangerous position he decided to move south under cover of darkness. The incoming fire had stopped. D Company moved off after eleven o’clock and had only gone a mile or so when they met messenger who brought orders from Col. Grant that they had to stand and hold Belloy at all costs. Although not said in the message the plan was that while the forward line gritted its teeth and held on the rest of the 51st Division could escape southwards and hopefully get away at the port of Le Havre.

All the injured were brought into the cellar of the chateau and each of the men received a couple of spoonfuls of rough soup. The previous day they had eaten just a small portion of stew. They were tired and getting hungry and were probably wishing that they had stashed more of the cheese at Rouen several days ago. Next day the attacks intensified. They were down to less than two hundred fit men spaced out around the chateau about 400 yards from the house. At 7 a.m. the first strong attack came against Ian and friends in 15 Platoon and they retreated through an orchard. As they did so they lost all three of their Bren-gun carriers. One was sent back to the house with the wounded, one foundered on an apple tree and the other was abandoned malfunctioning with most of their ammunition still on board. All day mortar rained in and there were two strong infantry attacks, both repelled with most of the losses on the other side. Just before dark there was more mortar fire and six tanks moved into position around the chateau, then all went quiet.

At seven o’clock on the 7th the mortars began again, heavier than the day before and closing in. One attack of foot soldiers came mid-morning and was fought off. In the afternoon the mortar fire increased with shells pounding the earth around the chateau one every few seconds. No time to think, no time to move, no time to respond and in any case their ammunition was all but finished. The infantry patrols moved in ever closer until it was possible to throw grenades. Ian felt a jab in his right knee; a piece of shrapnel pierced his leg. To the left he saw one of his mates run forward. A mortar shell removed his head but he kept going forward for a few paces as if he hadn’t noticed the loss of his head. Everybody scrambled for the shelter of the chateau as the shells screamed in throwing towers of earth in the air. Now they were down to 150 fit men with little or no ammunition. Outside encircling the house were more than one thousand five hundred.

The order had been to hold Belloy at all cost. Inglis wrestled with his conscience and held council with his junior officers. To fight on would indeed have cost all their lives but in practical terms they could only have held on an hour or so more. Such bloody sacrifice was senseless. It was decided that no useful purpose could be served by continuing. The white flag was put out. Surrender was accepted. The German commander moved up to take command of the chateau. He saluted John Inglis, looked around and said, “Are these all the men you have?”

A burial party was assembled to inter the fourteen dead Argylls around the house. They were buried in the grounds of the chateau and after the war their remains were transferred to public cemeteries. No doubt the lad without a head would be one of those “Known only unto God”. The German casualties, several times more than the Scots, were taken away by their comrades. Ambulance teams were formed and given adequate scope to gather up the fifty or so injured. German transport was provided and they were taken to a field hospital. Ian’s knee was easily treated. An orderly removed the shrapnel and bandaged up the wound.

Meanwhile one of Ian’s drinking pals nearly caused the immediate execution of all the prisoners. Willie Kemp, a wild character from Ballachulish, was one of the burial party. Although everyone thought the ammunition was finished he produced a hand grenade from his pocket. He was set to pull the pin and throw it among the Germans. Bruce Cheape grabbed it from him and threw it instead in the bottom of the open grave.

“Bloody Hell man! You’ll get us all killed,” he snapped at Kemp. With Cheape’s quick thinking and quick action the incident went unnoticed.

The officers were taken away in a truck and all the uninjured men were marched away towards Abbeville. Quite a long way to march they thought. They had no idea that they were setting out on a march that would take them up into Belgium and across Holland. They were tired and excruciatingly hungry. They would march for six weeks with barely any normal food and sleep on the ground where they stopped each night.

The other half of the battalion got away to the south and skimmed round the edge of St. Valery-en-Caux and managed to get to Le Havre and home to the UK not knowing that Ian’s C Company and the remnants of D Company were now prisoners of war. The rest of what was left of the 51st division converged on the town of St. Valery-en-Caux. They had hoped to be evacuated from Le Havre but Rommel and his Ghost Division swept rapidly down and across to the sea to cut off their escape route. Once in St. Valery, General Fortune refused to surrender and the town was shelled heavily for two days. When ships eventually arrived to take off the besieged 51st the weather was turning bad and Rommel’s guns were in good position above the harbour to sink or turn around the rescue vessels. On June 12th it was eventually over.

Many years later Ian Black and his comrades would maintain that they were captured at St. Valery probably because they had heard mention of the other St. Valery on the Somme. The two towns of the same name are less than fifty miles apart. With so much movement, forward, back and sideways it is little wonder that they didn’t really know exactly where they were.

In any case be it Belloy, St Valery-en-Caux or any point between there and St. Valery-sur-Somme, those who hadn’t died or escaped were, by the middle of June, plodding north–east and a long way from home. And back home Churchill, in a seven-page presentation on June 18th, told everyone that “This was their finest hour.” Was he a brilliant orator? Or was he an incompetent idiot? Or was he a war hungry zealot?

The Chateau de Belloy survived, more or less. Today it has one less floor than it had then. Hiding sleepily behind the trees, just visible from the road, it offers few clues to the passer-by of its heroic moments.

15. STALAG XXA

France to Poland, June to July 1940

Hungry bellies, angry minds, tired souls and hurting wounds, united in profound depression, officers, middle ranks and common soldiers, they marched north from Abbeville up by Lille across into Flanders in Belgium. About twenty miles a day, easy for these men a few weeks ago, now each step was an agonising effort. The disappointment of losing, the humiliation of giving up and the sad loss of friends would have been enough to wear them down but their physical condition also deteriorated rapidly.

Quite a number had some form of injury but still had to march, including Ian, with his bandaged knee. In the few days of fighting they had effectively not eaten or slept. Now they slept on the bare earth and there was no provision of food. Along the way some French women offered food and water as they passed but these women were brutally beaten back with rifle butts by the guards. At the moment of capture the men had been dealt with surprisingly cordially. They had fought as soldiers against professionally disciplined enemy soldiers. But their captors were forward advancing troops whose main purpose was to continue their advance, bury their dead and push on. Prisoners were passed back to second and third line forces who wanted to be able to tell their grandchildren that they had whipped the British.

While still in France and Belgium the temptation and the practicality of escape existed so the line of march was strictly and cruelly imposed. A few unfortunate lads with the beginnings of “the runs” were summarily shot for moving out of the line to relieve themselves behind a tree. On the 14th of June just before they entered Belgium three members of C Company slipped away. Sandy MacDonald, Ginger Wilson and Willie Kemp (the lad with the grenade), all from Ballachulish, parted from the rest and escaped south into Spain. In later years they became something of a folk legend around the Highlands. They were stopped several times and each time spoke only Gaelic, so that they were miraculously allowed to go on their way. They arrived back in Scotland in late July and were subsequently decorated. But the escape of a few made life more hazardous for those left behind.

On the other hand this was war, not renowned for its niceties. With the Geneva Convention all captured personnel expected reasonable treatment. However, inexperience, incompetence, fear, disorder, all more prevalent in the rearguard lines of any army, could easily lead to thoughtless cruelty. Remember the German officer, caught by the Oban lads? What became of him? He was marched south at bayonet point as the captured Scots marched north. A and B company had marched all night on the nights of 6th and 7th so on the 8th they were nervous and irritable. They came upon a German patrol. The prisoner called out. He was bayoneted to death. Was this fair treatment under the Geneva Convention? Or was it the common spontaneous action of men at war? Was it any different to the men who were executed for going to take a shit behind a tree? War is the demon not the soldier.

It is doubtful that the captured Scots would have had much sympathy for the German officer. By the time they had their first meal they had been marching about four days so that effectively they had been a week without food. From the end of May until the middle of June about thirty thousand joined this march, one third British, two thirds French. The British lads had nothing but their uniforms and tin helmets while the French had bits and pieces of equipment.

On the fourth night they stopped and the French cooked up a scavenged soup, mostly of nettles. The Highlanders got their share in their tin helmets. Tough luck for those who had thrown their helmet away. Sometimes they passed apple trees, sometimes peaches or cherries by the roadside but many were not fully ripe and often aggravated the tummy problems. There was no formal issue of food until they stopped in Flanders on the 23rd of June. Red Cross officials were there to monitor the situation and provide a little bread and some food was given by the local people. With the Red Cross watching, the bullyboys were less in evidence. Prisoner lists were registered so from then on there was some small measure of protection.

Up and on, they arrived on the 3rd of July in the town of Hulst in Holland. Hulst is like an island, surrounded by canals, and at that time was the convergence point of coal barges. All the British prisoners were separated here from the French and loaded onto these coal barges. At first they were forced to go below and the hatches were battened down. They set off east towards the Rhine and the stench and black coal-dust became intolerable in the July heat. The guards here were older men, more tolerant, and they opened the hatches to let the prisoners breathe. At least here nobody was shot for going behind a tree. Bodily functions had to be performed hanging from a pole across the water. They weren’t shot for falling off but quite a few had to be fished from the canals. The older guards also allowed the Dutch people to give them food and drink but there was only one stop in the three-day journey.

They arrived at the Rhine port of Emmerich on the 3rd of July, wretchedly hungry, filthy and ridden with body lice. Nobody was in any doubt that they were on the defeated side. Nobody felt inspired to think that “This was their finest hour.” The next day they were crammed into railway horse-wagons, forty men, a bucket as a toilet, a lump of black bread, some water and the doors barred shut. They rolled on, destination unknown and with a couple of stops to empty the buckets they arrived at their final stop on July 11th. They had been on the move for over a month but they still had a few miles to march.

Torun, Poland, one hundred miles north of Warsaw, birthplace of Nicholas Copernicus who first proclaimed that the Earth was round. Torun was and still is a beautiful little gingerbread town on the banks of the wide flowing Vistula. At that time the Germans had renamed it Thorn. South of the river in an area called Podgorz was a group of stone forts. This was the base of the prisoner of war camp designated the name Stalag XXA. This was the end of the line.

Not everyone from the Argylls went to Stalag XXA. The officers went to Oflags in Germany. After that the fighting units were significantly separated, firstly by injuries, then by the long straggling march and then they were broken up randomly and sent various places by the guards. When Ian arrived at Torun there was nobody in his immediate group that he had fought alongside. Later as some came from St. Valery there were a few that he knew or had seen from other regiments. The main camp was a fort called Karola Kniaziewicza but to the Germans and their prisoners it was Fort 13. It is, nowadays, a training base of the Polish Airforce. There were 16 forts in all, used in varying ways as part of the prison camp.

At first sight Podgorz was, for Ian, not unlike his homeland of Barcaldine and Appin. Walking from the station to the fort reminded him of the walk from the station in Benderloch to Teenie’s house at Baravullin. There were old pine trees, sycamores and elms and scattered patches of silver birch trees much like home. The houses were small and few in number, wooden or stone built, some with corrugated iron roof but most with red tiles. Chickens picked at the earth and dogs barked as they passed down the wooded lane. But this was not home. This was a foreign land. Faces peered from behind curtains as they went by, disappearing quickly when a guard came into view.

Yes, the landscape was very like Lorne area but something was missing. The hills, the mountains, the large looming Ben Lora, the purple, heather covered mountains of Mull, always there in the background. This country had no hills. This country had no heather, no bracken.

“Strange!” Ian thought, “this land where trees are the same but the undergrowth so different.” How long would they be here? What would they do in this foreign land? Where were they? Murmured guesses passed up and down the marching line. Someone asked a guard. Poland. What the hell were they doing in Poland? The irony was lost on most of the bedraggled column of Scots. Britain had entered the war in virtuous defence of Poland. Here they were now, captive, in the land they were supposed to defend.

Each man had to strip while his filthy clothes were washed. Each head was shaved, a welcome move since it got rid of the lice. Later with the clothes returned a number was hung around each man’s neck and his photograph taken. They were now officially prisoners of the Third Reich. Ian Black was number 16622.

They were surprised to find a community of prisoners already established. The forts and the few outbuildings were occupied by those who fought the rearguard at Dunkirk. Many from the other regiments who had tried to take the bridgehead at Abbeville had just arrived two days before. They were busy at work erecting enormous tents. Within the next week, when the remnants of the 51st Division arrived, the numbers of British inmates would swell to eighteen thousand, mostly living in tents. The town of Torun across the river had a population less than half of that. There was going to be good business for the sawmills of the area as tons of wooden boards began to arrive for the construction of huts before the winter snows descended.

On the 31st of July the Red Cross sent an inspection team to check on the conditions within the burgeoning camp. They compiled a seven-page report on the situation of the prisoners, living quarters, nutrition, hospital facilities and urgent requirements. They praised the excellent level of administration within the camp and were assured by the Kommandant, Major Widner, that should the British Red Cross supply extra underwear, toiletry items and food it would be fairly and efficiently distributed to the prisoners. Unfortunately this report did not land on the correct desk in Whitehall till the end of September and the snows of winter would be well on the way before the first parcels began to arrive. In the meantime the International Red Cross had already started to try and fill the gap. But for the next few weeks the 18,000 hungry stomachs received a daily diet of watery soup made from bad quality potatoes and kale leaves.

The hospital in Fort 14 came in for more severe criticism. Medical care was adequate but the building, dark, unventilated and unsuited to the purpose. The situation was aggravated by a large number of men whose injuries would deem them “unfit for normal duties.” Immediate repatriation was the Red Cross recommendation. This proposal was readily accepted by the Germans. They did not want these men. They had no use for them and no great wish to spend critical resources caring for them. But the corridors of power in Whitehall were not about to jump to the demands of the Nazi Hun even if rubber-stamped by the Red Cross. Many had to wait till the beginning of 1941. Some never made it through the winter.

The first word on everyone’s mind was escape. How could they escape? Tall wooden watchtowers, trigger-happy guards, high barbed fences and not the slightest notion of where they were nor where to go. Escape had only one easy answer, only one route. With chronic illness or injury they went to the hospital. The Germans had agreed to repatriate anyone shown to be unfit, so it was simply a case of finding a chronic illness that was not too chronic.

Ian swallowed a small piece of silver paper from a cigarette pack. He told a guard that he had to see a doctor urgently.

“Was ist los?” Asked the guard.

Ian clutched at his stomach. “It’s an ulcer, a duodenal ulcer and I think it’s going to perforate. I need the doctor urgently.”

He was marched off to Fort 14, half a mile down the lane, feigning pain all the way. He expected to be taken for an ex-ray but instead joined a line of other “walking wounded” most of whom seemed to be no worse than himself. A young lad came out of the doctor’s room, buttoning up his clothes.

“Some bloody doctor! He just asks if you smoke and then tells you cigarettes are bad for the stomach seelbern folly,” said the soldier, mispronouncing the German for silver paper. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

Eventually it was Ian’s turn. The doctor didn’t even look up.

“Tell me, soldier! Do you smoke?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you do with the silver paper? I do hope you haven’t been eating it. It can scratch your insides, you know. We may have to pump your stomach if you do that. Now, tell me. What’s your problem?”

“Aye, well, I had some stomach pains but they seem to have gone away. I think I’m OK now.”

He went out and joined a small group of others waiting, looking a bit humble. They were marched back to their tents at double time. Poor Ian, thirty years later he would receive a war pension mostly on the basis of stomach ulcers caused by prison food.

16. THE NEWS HITS HOME

Benderloch, June- December 1940

Calum MacKenzie came home. He got away at Dunkirk. With him, and the few that got away, the news hit home. Some of the boys were not coming back. How many had died: how many were prisoners: nobody knew. The newspapers and radio were full of the marvellous evacuation at Dunkirk. Nothing was said about the 51st Division left behind. A deep worry settled into the Scottish Highlands; memories of 1914–18 and the losses sustained by the 51st Division. Mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters, loved ones all began to worry.

Everybody knew that something had gone wrong but news came in wisps of rumour. Nobody could say for sure what had happened. It was all very unclear. Despite the rhetoric and upbeat reports on the withdrawal at Dunkirk nobody could fathom what had happened and even less what part the 51st played in the picture. The problem was that France had capitulated and the entire Highland Division, with few exceptions were killed or taken prisoner. There was no positive communication link by which the British Government could receive this news and impart it to the families. They knew in their hearts what had happened but official confirmation took some weeks.

About 250 of the 8th Argylls got back home, many of whom were from Oban, but they couldn’t tell anybody about the fate of their loved ones. They simply didn’t know who had died or who was in captivity and in any case they were recalled quickly to band together a new 8th Argylls to go to North Africa. All across the Highlands and Western Islands and down to the Clyde Valley thousands of parents, wives, lovers, families and friends had to wait till around August to know about their men-folk.

On the 10th of August Donald MacKenzie received a small buff coloured postcard, “ON HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE”. He was in the garden and took the card from the postman. It was the fold-over type that was opened by tearing away the sides and top. Opened up flat it was Army Form B. 104–83A.

“SIR OR MADAM” it began but with the “or madam” crossed out.

“I have to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office to the effect that (No.) 2975808 (Rank) P/te (Name) Kenneth Keith Stewart MacKenzie (Regiment) Gordon Highlanders is a Prisoner of War in Stalag XXIA Germany.

Should any further information be received concerning him, such information will at once be communicated to you.

Instructions as to the method of communicating with Prisoners of War can be obtained at any Post Office.”

Donald didn’t read the signature at the bottom. His hand was trembling as he turned back into the cottage to tell Jessie. He remembered how, as postman, he had delivered the same card to so many families in the last war. At least it wasn’t the other more dreaded B104 that informed people equally coldly that Number, Rank, Name and Regiment was reported missing in action and everyone knew that “any other information received” would most probably be that the serviceman had died. At least Kenny was alive. Maybe soon he would write.

In fact his postkard arrived two days later along with one for Teenie from Ian. The prison camp postal service was quicker than the British War Office. Both cards were equally brief just saying that they were prisoners but that they were alright. Teenie’s sister Katy received the postcard from her husband Gillies before the B104 from the Army. Ian’s B104 notification went to his father at the Rest Home in Oban. In many ways the MacKenzie family felt “lucky”. All but Calum were in prison camps goodness knew where but they were alive. Around the villages there were families who received sadder news. After the initial apprehension about the three “boys” there was great amusement on receipt of a letter as they tried to get their tongues round Kriegsgefangenen (Prisoners of War).

At first it seemed that the prison camps were in Germany but when the letters arrived the picture became clearer. Kenny’s letters came from Stammlager 21A and Ian’s from Stammlager 20A. This was shortened to Stalag and the numbers in Roman numerals; hence the ominous name Stalag XXA. Ian in XXA was in Thorn (Torun), about 120 miles west and a little north of Warsaw in Poland while Kenny was also in Poland but near Wroclaw next the Czechoslovakian border. Stalag XXIA was at the town of Schildberg (Ostrzeszow). This confusion of changing names and moving frontiers was difficult for the folk back home to absorb so it was always easier just to say the boys were in a German prison camp.

While all this was taking place many miles away on the other side of Europe the war edged its way also into the quiet glens of Argyll. The women went into action with the knitting needles to make socks and gloves and balaclavas. The War Office advertised the need to produce more food at home so every square inch of land around Baravullin went into the production of vegetables, mostly potatoes. Some families were evacuated from Glasgow to Benderloch and Baravullin played host to a few of these. For a time the radio brought daily reports of the “Battle of Britain” in the air and the “Blitz” in London. Glasgow and Clydebank took their share of bombs so the war crept ever nearer.

The biggest shock for Benderloch came on the 23rd of December 1940. The P&O Shipping line had a cargo ship called SS Breda sheltering in deep waters called Oban Roads between the town of Oban and Benderloch. She was on the way from London to India and was waiting to pick up a convoy. Her cargo was fighter planes and spares, other military hardware, 3000 tons of cement and some animals. A formation of Heinkel bombers took off from Stavanger in German occupied Norway looking for convoys. As they sped across Scotland one pilot got his sights on SS Breda sitting in the bay and let go four 550-pound bombs around her. She wasn’t hit directly but the blast caused extensive damage. A salvage attempt was put in action and they pulled her into shallower water.

The animals got free and swam ashore, nine dogs, ten horses and the ship’s pet monkey. Bad weather interrupted the rescue and the ship drifted back out to deep water and sank. Only her mast and funnel were visible at high tide. There she remained throughout the war years to remind the Highland folk that the war was never far away.

The Oban Roads became a frequent assembly area for Atlantic convoys and two “Ack-Ack” anti-aircraft batteries were installed on the Benderloch side. Soldiers became a familiar sight around the village and often received “Highland hospitality” at the MacKenzie house. Jessie MacKenzie’s cakes and tea often brought the lads visiting. Or was it Teenie, the young lady of the house that was the attraction? She enjoyed the attention and sometimes walked back down the road with one of the soldiers, a harmless flirtation, she thought.

Her brother Calum didn’t agree. By chance he came home on leave one day and met Teenie and her escort on the road to Baravullin. Teenie had never seen her brother so angry. How dare she consort with the soldiers while her own man was a prisoner in a foreign land?

“But we were just walking to the end of the road,” protested Teenie.

“It makes no difference. How do you think Ian would feel if he came up the road like me just now and saw you just walking with another man? I insist you stop seeing this man.”

“But he just comes like the other boys for tea and scones. We have to be nice to them. How would you feel? You would be the first at the door for some of Mammy’s scones.”

“I suppose I would but you shouldn’t go walking with them. Alright?”

“Oh, Calum, you’re too old fashioned but alright maybe you’re right. Is it alright to walk with you?” she slipped her arm in her brother’s and they walked back to the cottage together.

Nearly two thousand miles away at that moment Ian Black was licking the edge of a postcard to Teenie. His message was not particularly romantic. “Please send socks!”

17. CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS

Torun, July to December 1940

In July the landscape had seemed quite like home and the weather too. It was pleasantly warm with frequent rain showers. The tents were not so pleasant when it rained. So many men crammed into a small area, no privacy, no space to call your own. Everybody became irritable and the constant commands, barked in German, gnawed at nerve ends.

“Raus! Raus! Raus!” was the friendly morning call.

By the time all 18,000 prisoners had roused and the roll call was checked they had sometimes to stand two or three hours. It was a game played out daily. The prisoners intentionally messed up the head count, so the guards kept them on parade until they had their numbers checked. Breakfast was the mushy potato soup and they had to line up with mess tin or tin helmet while this delight was slopped up. Later in the day there was some black bread and “coffee” made from acorns. Everybody needed fresh underwear and socks but they never seemed to come.

Through August and September the days were spent building huts for winter. As one more hut was completed the tent village shrunk a little but this too, was a game where the prisoners were the only losers. They could have finished the building work in half the time but why co-operate with the enemy so they spent a few more weeks than necessary in tents. Unlike many of the prisoners, Ian liked building huts. Fitting windows, hanging doors, installing woodstoves. This was his stock-in-trade.

The Red Cross visit re-established arrangements for letters to go home but on a controlled basis and only on official Stalag paper or specially made fold-over postcards. The massive influx of prisoners had interrupted the mail service but the Red Cross officials insisted on its importance for the men’s moral. Ian decided to write to Christina. She could then tell his father that he was alright. (He didn’t know, of course, that the British Army Form B. 104–83a had been sent to his father at the end of July.) He also wanted to know what had happened to Calum and Kenny. And please, please try and send some socks! His boots were still in good condition but all the marching had played havoc with his socks. The mail system however, wasn’t exactly next day delivery. Every piece of correspondence was scrutinised and censored by both the German and British authorities and replies from home were directed back through the same system.

As the days rolled from summer into autumn the huts were completed but there was still no mail from home, still no socks. Each hut was built to take 300 men, 50 three-tier bunks along each side, a small stove in the centre and electric light bulbs hanging from the roof joists. Each bed had a rough mattress but no blankets. A large batch of Polish army greatcoats was acquired and these served for daytime wear and as bedcovers at night, not so practical on the rainy days.

The leaves fell from the trees and the ground hardened with the first winter frost. The north wind began to make its presence felt and the morning roll call was now taking just an hour or so. The watery soup was more welcome if only for its warmth. A letter arrived from Teenie with news of her brothers, but still no socks. The holes were now so big that all five toes “peeped through”.

The good news was that none of the family had been killed and Calum had managed to get away at Dunkirk. He came home to Benderloch for a couple of days and was now back in service. Kenny had been captured at St. Valery and so also had sister Katy’s husband, Gillies but by now Ian was fairly sure they weren’t at Torun.

Christmas bells began to jingle around Torun and the snow looked like it was here to stay a while. Horse drawn sleighs became commonplace while wheeled vehicles just bogged down and became unserviceable. Morning roll call became much faster. Nobody really wanted frostbite just for the fun of messing up the guards. The cold in fact began to form a common bond between prisoner and guard. They were all in a foreign land in a hostile climate. Sometimes the guards were even a little envious having to stay outside guarding the perimeter fences while the prisoners were “warm” inside.

The temperature fell well below zero and ice started to form a skin on the interior of the huts. Wood for the stove was thickly coated with snow and ice. A supply of coal arrived and each hut was allocated one bucketful per day. The men were now wearing their greatcoats both day and night. They had to break two or three inches of ice to obtain water and there was no real means of heating water to wash or shave. Razor blades were hard to find anyway. The Red Cross parcels were slow getting through on the snow-covered roads and there were still no parcels from home. Small items took on a barter value. One cigarette bought half a Gillette razor blade. The cigarette was seldom smoked but held for future barter. Sometimes it didn’t exist at all but was simply the unit of currency jotted down to keep track of who owed what to whom. The half razor blade on the other hand was used if its owner could procure some soap and lukewarm water. Of course there wasn’t the luxury of a safety razor to hold the blade. That’s why half a blade was more useful, held deftly between thumb and forefinger. There was no real hurry except in getting shaved before the water froze again.

Still no parcels, no underwear, no socks! The situation was becoming drastic. Frostbite was becoming a real danger. Ian’s socks now had no toes and no heels. Necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention. After about twenty shaves Ian’s half razor blade was cutting his face so he abandoned shaving. He sat on his bunk looking at the useless blade thinking that maybe he should have smoked the cigarette and just grown a beard. That’s what he would have to do now anyway. He laid down the blade and removed a boot to contemplate the current sock situation. Suddenly he had an idea. He took the razor blade and nicked a two-inch sliver of wood from the side of his bed. He trimmed it to a thin shape with a pointed end and then delicately cut out an eye in the other end. He now had a darning needle. All he needed was some wool and he could darn his socks.

He rolled back on his bed and laughed. He remembered Glen Lyon and Meggernie, thousands of bloody sheep, tons of wool. He remembered clipping time, the warm spring wind and the woolsacks stuffed full with freshly clipped wool. He remembered the songs from school when he had to sing in Gaelic and had no idea what he was singing. He learned later that most were songs from the Hebrides, wool-making songs, where the women sang as they laboriously combed the wool and teased it into thread. He remembered his Aunt Sarah sitting knitting by the fireside on cold winter nights. He remembered the first pair of stockings that she knitted for him and how he’d caught the top of one on a fence the first day he wore them. He laughed again as he remembered how the wool pulled away from the top in handfuls once the link in the stitch was broken.

Suddenly, he stopped laughing. He looked down at his frozen foot and pulled off his stocking. They weren’t army issue. They were a pair that Teenie had knitted and given him when he came home at New Year. God, that seemed like years ago. He took the razor blade and gently slit the wool at the top end of the sock. He pulled warily as the wool started to unwind and kept pulling until he had removed about an inch from the length of the stocking. He cut it loose and threaded the fixed end through his “needle” then carefully sewed the end firmly so it wouldn’t come undone. He rolled the newly acquired wool into a ball and proceeded to darn the toes and heel until he had a serviceable sock and then did the same with the other. By the time the first socks arrived from home he had ripped back most of his stockings until he just had the feet left. In the meantime, the needle passed its way around the hut as other soldiers joined the darning club.

That, more or less, took care of his feet but it was a bitterly cold and miserable Christmas. New Year was worse for the Scots lads in the camp. Just one wee dram would have made all the difference; instead the usual potato sludge and a celebratory bar of Red Cross chocolate. February brought another fall of snow, Ian’s thirty-fifth birthday and the news that he was moving out. He was going to an Arbeits Kommando, a work camp near the town of Graudenz about fifty miles further down the Vistula. Just before they left some parcels arrived from home; the long awaited socks and a balaclava and some food items.

About one hundred prisoners were loaded onto trucks and the convoy trundled out of Podgorz towards the cantilever bridge across the Vistula. Just over the bridge they caught their first sight of the real world for six months. It seemed strange how ordinary people bustled about the town, the businessmen in top hat and tails, boys pushing carts and women going shopping. The reality, in fact, seemed unreal but it was a welcome break from the austerity of camp life and the prisoners chattered like excited children as they spotted each new aspect of Polish life. Just as well that they didn’t know of the beautiful little gingerbread delicacies in the bakers’ shops. Morning potato soup was already beginning to curdle in their bellies in the bouncing vehicles. North they went along narrow dirt track roads, flat straight roads with trees either side, rutted with the snow and slush. At Graudenz they stopped outside the town while the drivers checked their maps and then went down a narrow lane into a clearing in the woods.

They disembarked from the trucks with some trepidation as the guards pointed their guns and signalled them into a line. A jackbooted commander stepped forward and addressed them in English.

“If you look to your left gentlemen you will see your accommodation has not yet been assembled.”

They turned to see three wooden huts in sections lying in the snow.

“When you have them assembled you will not have to sleep in the snow.”

The huts were assembled fast including one for the guards. That night they did not sleep in the snow but without beds or a stove it was cold enough.

From spring to autumn that year they worked in the fields, heavy back breaking work but by summer there was a regular supply of goods both from home and from the Red Cross. From the farms came the occasional egg or piece of cheese, bread or milk. Fresh vegetables or fruit could sometimes be “acquired”. Working outside in the summer months was not unpleasant and by harvest time Ian and friends had a good suntan. That summer tens of thousands of German troops passed through Graudenz on the way to the Russian front. Watching them head off towards a winter war the prisoners didn’t feel any envy.

With a carpet of autumn leaves on the ground and the first scent of snow in the wind the camp closed down and the trucks arrived to take them back to Torun. Or so they thought. The trucks moved out and instead of going back to Torun they crossed the Vistula and went west through the town of Bromberg and to a village called Nakel. Another set of build yourself huts awaited them and the promise of somewhere to sleep once they had built them.

Ian spent Christmas of 1941 in the comparative comfort of a wooden hut in Nakel. He had stockings now; his health was fine and was better able to withstand the bitterly cold winter months. Someone acquired a couple of accordions, a fiddle with one string missing and a trumpet and created a “Philharmonic, Highland, Ragtime Band”.

In February they were on the move again. Back in the trucks they trundled slowly through the snow back towards Graudenz but then they turned across to the south side of the Vistula just before the town and came back west for about ten miles. They turned off into a dark wood before the town of Kulm and down a bumpy track they came upon their next holiday camp. This time the huts were already built. Nobody told them where they were and they moved in to this new billet thinking they were back at Graudenz. It didn’t matter anyway. A camp was a camp, a field was a field and one sugar beet looked much like all the rest but in this camp they were to cut more firewood than sugar beet.

18. DEAR JOHN

Near Torun, Poland, 1942

From February till November in 1942 Ian was in the little work camp near the town of Kulm. It is a quaint little town built on one of the few hilltops in the Torun area. It is better known by the Polish name of Chelmno.

When the snow cleared the men were divided into groups to work in the farms or forests or sometimes in local workshops. Everyone who worked received vouchers by way of payment. These were called lagergeld and in theory were exchangeable within the economy of the Reich but in practice there was nowhere the prisoners could go to redeem their value. It was just a tantalising paper exercise to show that it was not slave labour. None of the prisoners were under any illusion as to the reality of their situation.

Escape, though always on their minds, was never a realistic prospect in the middle of a land they did not know and unable to plan accurately any escape route. Some tried unsuccessfully but very few ever got all the way back to the U.K. and each attempt made life more difficult for everybody with punitive reprisals. But in these work camps “bugger-up” was the name of the game. If they had to work for the enemy, then they would do as little as possible and poor standard work. Starting with the inevitable morning roll call, where several re-counts were the norm, everyone enjoyed putting a spoke in the wheel of the Wehrmacht and evenings were spent telling stories of the silly pranks these grown men had played on the guards.

Survival in prison camp relied greatly on comradeship. With so many men living together under difficult circumstances there were frequent squabbles so there was a tendency to form small groups of friends. Sometimes the common bond was the regiment, sometimes home origins and sometimes just chance. There was sometimes friction between Scots and English but this was never a problem for Ian, a Scotsman born in England. With Bob Shand, a twenty-year old conscript from the north of Scotland, Bob Potter, a detective constable from Scotland Yard and Pete Daly a jovial little Cockney he formed a close friendship, sharing cigarettes, chocolate bars and worries. When one was down the others helped revive his spirits. Sometimes they all felt down together and other days some little, silly thing could lift them from a downer — some mail, a Red Cross parcel or some misfortune that had befallen one of the guards

The four of them were singing and fooling around one night just before “lights out” and the guard came in and told them to shut up, muttering as he left something about “Schottlanders”. As the door closed behind him the two Scots burst into laughter as Pete Daly flew into an indignant rage.

“How the flippin’ heck can he call me a Schottlander? Everybody knows I’m a bleedin’ Cockney”

“Yeah, you tell ’em Pete. Sing ’em a Cockney song.” jibed Bob Potter.

“Cockney song. I’ll sing you a bloody Cockney song!” shouted Pete.

By this time all the hut had gathered round. “Come on Pete! You show ’em lad.”

So off he went in full voice, standing on a chair.

“Out last night we had a party

All our friends were very gay and hearty

Wasn’t it a treat for the Bruces down the street?

‘Alf past ten wasn’t ‘ere a rush

Someone said we couldn’t get a bus

So me and the Missus put ’em up for the night

Fifty lay on the parlour floor

Down the cellar lay fifty more

On the stairs they lay in pairs

Tables, chairs too-oo-oo

Uncle Jim was very much put up

So we put ‘im in the kennel with the bulldog pup

Left in the lurch, I sat upon the perch

With the cock-a-doodle-doo-doo-doo…”

Everybody clapped in time while Ian and Bob Shand danced in the middle of the hut trying to adapt Pete’s rhythm to a Highland dance. With neither one willing to dance the lady’s steps they cavorted round the hut and nearly crashed into the guard who came back in to a rousing chorus of “cock-a-doodle-doo-doo-doo.” He went crazy, drawing his rifle up, shouting and screaming. Having been over a year in the camp most of the lads had quite a good understanding of German but this was incomprehensible. Somebody slapped the lid on the wood stove, which was the only source of light and everyone’s favourite guard went stumbling, still raging, fumbling towards the door. Good sense prevailed and all the men settled down quietly with a general acceptance that Pete had proven his Cockney citizenship. The stove died down and the cold crept into Hut 5 of Stammlager XXA Kulm.

By now the mail was getting through regularly from home and more parcels from mothers, wives, girlfriends, churches and W.R.I committees with socks, balaclavas, chocolate bars and cigarettes. Most folk back home now knew where their loved ones were and the Red Cross were still providing nutritional support. This mail was sometimes given or withheld like a carrot and stick discipline but generally got through to the men in the end. Bartering became common not only between prisoners but with the locals, they came into contact with, or to gain some special favour from the guards. British cigarettes were much sought after and a few squares of chocolate could be a special treat.

Life was austere, not just for the prisoners, but for the Poles and Germans too. Here, in the middle of Poland they were well out of the war zone but the war was still going on and things were getting tough for everyone. Some of the basic rations that came from the Red Cross became luxury items to be traded carefully or shared with special consideration. Stealing in the camp was almost unheard of except on the odd occasion when someone was unwilling to share. One lad was given a white loaf by a farmer while on work detail. He decided to keep it and slept with it under his head. He woke in the morning to find that his camp mates had removed the two ends of the loaf and just a few crumbs were left in the middle. Bread was normally black and hard, made the men said, from sawdust and served daily with potato soup highlighting the value of treasures like a tin of corned beef.

For survival the body needs nutrition but the spirit feeds on hope. Perhaps more welcome than these rations was the mail from home, the link with the real world that told them they hadn’t been forgotten. There was never any news of how the war was developing. What hadn’t been obliterated by British censors was stamped over by the camp officials. But nobody really cared; it was great to hear from the folks back home and after a few letters like this they learned to write just about homely things.

Photos were the real treasures and the German captors encouraged the exchange of photos. They took pictures of the prisoners and gave them copies to send home: good propaganda showing that the men were humanely treated but were still prisoners. That hurt because although they knew that they had been abandoned in the retreat from France they also knew that their humiliation and imprisonment not only helped the enemy work effort but provided constant propaganda to boost the German spirit and deflate British moral.

Sometimes the letters brought news from home that was not so welcome. Pete Daly’s mother was badly injured in the London blitz and Bob Potter’s old police station had been totally destroyed with two of his old workmates inside. In the middle of November things hit a low point. Pete got a letter from back home. It started, “My Dearest Pete…” but it was what everybody called a “Dear John”. It went on to explain that although she still loved him and missed him and thought about him every day, she had met a young airman who was great fun and with the terrible times of the blitz and not having Pete she really needed someone to cheer her up. She was sure that he would understand.

He understood perfectly! He went from the numbness of shock through the anguish of childlike sobbing and into a deep state of depression. The others tried everything but could not shake him back into his normal bouncy character. He stayed like that for days. But happy or sad, in good health or in bad, this was a labour camp and they just had to get out and get on, out into the forests or the fields, the mines or the factories. Life trudged on and Ian and the two Bob’s reckoned that Pete would bounce back.

Work that week was in the forest cutting logs to feed the ingenious gas tractors that the Germans had invented. This work took them out along the banks of the River Vistula. Ian’s inquisitive mind was intrigued by the strange boiler contraption that converted wood-logs into gas and it was one of the jobs he didn’t mind doing. Pete, on the other hand, was a city lad and he hated everything to do with the country so there was always a friendly banter between the men as they worked. Or avoided work! Nobody was sure how Pete had got himself into the open-air squad; he was a plumber by trade. Right now he was still on a downer, turning away from time to time so the others wouldn’t see the tears but they knew he was hurting. He was splitting large logs with an axe and he was bringing the axe down viciously so that the guards thought he was in an unusually energetic mood.

Suddenly he stopped and looked up.

“I’m going home,” he declared.

“Aye Pete, we’ll come too,” joked Bob Shand in his canny Highland lilt, “What time’s the next train?”

Pete ignored this and raised the axe to split the next log. The axe went nowhere near the log but instead he brought it down fiercely on his own lower leg. The others gasped as they heard the bone crunch.

“I’m going home,” he repeated.

“Guard!” somebody shouted. “There’s been an accident.”

Two guards came running, rifles outstretched. Two men were detailed to take him back to camp. Despite the obvious pain, there was a smile on his face.

“I’m going home,” he whispered.

The guards knew exactly what had happened. A week later most of the harvesting work was finished and they returned to the main camp at Torun. Nothing had changed much except all the tents were gone and there were a few more huts. On their return to the camp Ian and the two Bobs were called before the Unter Kommandant, Hauptmann Tettenborn.

As they entered the room he stood by the window, hands clasped behind his back. They had seen him many times at roll call but this was the first time at close quarters. He spun round on his heel!

“What happened last week with Private Daly was not an accident,” he said in perfect English. “Tell me what you know.”

“I’m sure it was an accident,” said Bob Potter. “But I didn’t see what happened.” Ian and the other Bob nodded in agreement.

The Unter Kommandant turned back towards the window. “I understand he received a “Dear John” letter.”

“Yes, two weeks ago,” replied Ian.

“The guards tell me that he thinks he is going home.”

“He wanted to go home, yes.”

Hauptmann Tettenborn stiffened noticeably and Ian winced, preparing himself for what was coming. He swung round sharply and glared at Ian reminding him of Mr. Arnold, the head teacher of so many years ago.

“Yes, soldier,” he paused a moment, “We all want to go home,” and he sunk heavily into the chair behind his desk. “It is out of my hands now. The Red Cross want him repatriated and the SS want him executed. Let’s hope the Red Cross win the argument and your friend goes home. He is certainly no use to me in that state. His leg is ruined.

Two weeks later news came through the grapevine. Pete Daly had been sent back to England via Slovakia, Austria and Switzerland. He had escaped but there was no sense of satisfaction, no sense of envy. Pete’s depression hung over them for quite some time.

Next month came the mail again with a letter for Ian. It was waiting when he came back from a work detail. He opened it and took out the contents. He studied it, turned it over and peered over it again. Tears started to form in his eyes and his hand shook a little. Bob Shand was watching him. He came over quietly and laid a hand on his shoulder comfortingly.

“Another Dear John?” he asked.

The tears were more obvious now as Ian passed the message to his friend. Bob didn’t really want to participate in his best friend’s discomfort but he glanced at the paper in his hand. It was a photo. A pretty, sparky looking girl, nicely dressed, just the hint of a smile. He turned the photo over. At the top was “SCRIVENS PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIOS OBAN”. In the bottom right hand corner was “Yours affectionately, Christina”. And in the middle, just to remind everybody was the usual stamp “STALAG XXA”.

“She’s nice,” said Bob. “She must have gone specially to have this taken.”

Ian just nodded, taking the photo back.

“I’m going to marry her,” he said.

“Have you asked her?”

“No, but she’ll say yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then, why don’t you ask her?”

“I’m going to. In my next letter.”

“Right laddie. So I’m going to have to get you home in one piece.”

“Aye. You can be my best man.”

“ You’re bloody right I will, so you’ll have to get me home in one piece too.”

They were still chuckling when Bob Potter came into the hut. Bob Shand pounced on him with the news. Ian handed him the photo.

“You lucky bugger. Do I get an invite too?”

“Aye. Won’t it be great? But I’ll have to ask Teenie first if she wants to marry me. Has anybody got a writing home docket?” All letters written from the prison camp had to be on the official “Stalag” paper.

There was a scramble to look for a postkard to write the formal proposal. Pete Daly’s misfortune had pulled everyone down. Now spirits soared once again, something to look forward to, something to believe in, something to live for.

19. RAUS! RAUS! RAUS! ALLES AUS!

Torun, 1943

Nearly sixty years later these words still ring in the ears of every surviving prisoner of the Third Reich.

“Raus! Raus! Raus! Alles aus!”

“ Get up! Get up! Get up! Everybody out!”

Every morning came the roll call. Everybody up and everybody out they stood and endured the tedium of the bogus head count. It didn’t serve any real purpose. There were some escape attempts and some prisoners who went into hiding in preparation for escape so there was some need to count heads from time to time. But the prisoners did everything in their power to “bugger-up” the count and the guards weren’t particularly bright. They had “extra” people more often than people missing. It was, in fact, counter productive as most days it served as a rallying point for the prisoners boosting the feeling of comradeship. It was also an opportunity for the grapevine to work spreading news about the progress of the war.

It was worse when they were back at the base camp in Podgorz. Out in the work camps the guards went through the motions of a roll call and then everybody went to work. Podgorz, Torun was the administrative base with its team of functionaries who wanted everything exactly right. Here also the prisoners were more lethargic and never in any great hurry to “raus” especially in the winter months, so all in all the morning roll call was always more of a drudge in Torun.

The 11th of February 1943 Ian Black was near to finishing a winter stay back at Podgorz. Today was his birthday and he took it into his head that as a special treat he was not going to “raus”. The guard came back in a second time.

“Raus! Raus! Raus!” his voice shook the windowpanes.

“Come on Ian! Get up!” Bob Potter had come back to see what was the matter. “Don’t be stupid. They’ll shoot you or something.”

“No. Today’s my birthday. I’m not getting up.”

“Well, suit yourself, mate. Count me out,” said Bob, assuming that Ian was just kidding, and out he went to join the rest.

“Raus,” screamed the guard, bringing his rifle up and pointing it at Ian’s head.

“I’m not well. I can’t get up.”

“If you’re not well you go to the hospital,” he screamed in German.

“Aus! Aus!” he screamed again.

Ian didn’t budge.

The muzzle of the gun pushed into his left ear.

“Aus soldat!” this time he wasn’t screaming. His voice was cold and menacing. “A-a-u-u-s!” The gun pressed harder.

“Alright but move that gun from my ear.”

The guard backed off, still with the rifle at the ready. Ian roused, got on his clothes and was marched out into the yard with everyone else.

Someone called out, “Come on, Jock! Raus laddie! We’re freezin’ our bleedin’ balls off while you’re in yer kip.”

Across the yard a Glasgow voice responded “Och, shuttup ya English twit. Can ye no see the laddie’s no weel?”

The gauntlet was down. Nobody could resist. The parade went into uproar as insult traded insult and the guards strutted up and down trying to restore order. Ian Black’s fate was sealed. Immediately after roll call he was marched to Fort 14 to the hospital and presented to the German doctor in charge.

“I understand you’re not well soldier. What exactly is your problem? Does our home cooking not agree with you?” taunted the doctor.

“My hair is falling out.”

The doctor exploded.

“Guter Gott im Himmel! Don’t you know there’s a war going on? And you are worried because you’re going bald. Look at me. I’ve got no hair.”

“ Yes I know there’s a war going on. That’s why we’re here. Isn’t it? I am not going bald. My hair is falling out. I think it’s alopecia.”

“Ah! You think it’s alopecia.”

“Yes. I’ve always had a good head of hair and now it’s coming out in handfuls.” Ian insisted.

“Oh, well soldier. I’ll give you some oil to massage your scalp,” conceded the doctor.

He poured some oil in a bottle and handed it over. “Now get out of here. I don’t want to see you back unless you’re dying.”

The doctor never saw Ian Black again. Three days later Ian was moved out and was never to return to Torun. Work groups were formed randomly, just a list of names crossed off against a list of work places to be filled. Some of the XXA men were shipped north to Stalag XXB at Marienburg just south of Danzig (now Gdansk). Ian was lucky in this respect in that he saw out most of his prison years along with Bob Shand and Bob Potter. They went together to Konitz, Camp XXA (124)

They were marched down to the station at Torun, a grand opulent building. Outside was a line of horse drawn carriages with their drivers sitting in top hat and tails waiting for the business gentlemen coming off the trains. Inside the station stood a long line of coaches, doors open, with people going to and fro’. At the front the locomotive was building up steam ready to go. The prisoners didn’t go on this train. They were marched two hundred yards more to a sideline where stood the familiar horseboxes. They climbed aboard.

The journey was surprisingly short, about sixty miles northwest passing through the town of Bromberg once again. Konitz was a small industrial and commercial town but the prison camp like most was out in the countryside, the inevitable line of wooden huts. This was home for the next two and a half years. The work as always was out in the farms but the strictness of the first two years was mellowing and more contact was allowed with the local people.

In the villages that they worked in or passed through, in the houses that they glimpsed inside and in the people themselves, Ian’s strongest impression was the obvious influence and dominance of the church. They were more afraid of the local priest that of the Germans. Every house had a cross above the door and a little shrine. Nobody ate meat on a Friday, which wasn’t a big sacrifice because they didn’t see much meat the other days either.

They arrived in Konitz at the end of February so for the first couple of weeks there wasn’t much to do except keep warm. Days and evenings were spent talking about home, telling stories of childhood and of the jobs they had in “civvy-street” and planning what they would do when they were free.

“What will you do, Bob?” asked Bob Shand of Bob Potter.

“I suppose I’ll go back to being a London Bobby. What about you Bob?” he bounced the question back.

“Oh, something in the motor trade or have my own shop. Maybe become a racing driver. Maybe go to America,” sitting in a prison camp in the middle of nowhere “maybe” could be anything they wanted.

“Bobby went to America,” chipped in Ian.

“Bobby who?” chorused the other two.

“Bobby, my brother. He’s a seaman. He went to America with my father during the depression. They went to New York and Chicago and the Niagara Falls. It was like the Wild West. Everybody carried a gun.” Ian retold his brother’s exploits with enthusiasm.

“Did your brother have a gun?” asked Bob Shand.

“No, but my father did. He never used it but he said he felt safer with a pistol under his pillow.”

“Are they still there?”

“No, Bobby went to Canada. He swam across the Niagara River to get over the border but later he became a Canadian citizen. He tried to cross the bridge from Lewiston to Queenstown but he hadn’t any papers so the Mounties wouldn’t let him over so he just jumped in the river and swam. I think he’s sailing again with a Canadian shipping line and…” he never finished his story.

“Raus! Raus! Alles aus!” Somebody had decided on an afternoon roll call.

20. TOMORROW WHEN THE WORLD IS FREE

HX-212, October 1942

HX-212 is not the name of another Stalag. It is the code name of a merchant shipping convoy that left Halifax, Canada and New York on the 26th of October 1942 with destination England. It was a large convoy with five columns of vessels. Somewhere near the tail of the column the 4000-ton tanker Vic Island was chugging along well laden and heavy in the water. Vic Island was an old vessel registered in Canada and named after the island wildlife sanctuary Île de Bic in the St Lawrence River estuary. The crew of course were Canadian except the Donkeyman, the ancillary boiler engineer. He was Robert Black, Ian’s brother Bobby.

As they left New York their scent was picked up by a hunting pack of German U-boats. It consisted of 13 submarines and was called Wolfpack Puma. Against this the convoy enjoyed the protection of Escort Group A3 with one British destroyer HMS Badger, one cutter, one British corvette and 5 Canadian corvettes. The hunters waited until the merchant vessels were out into the North Atlantic. They submerged and in the dark hours of the morning of the 27th they came up in the middle of the convoy. The leading U-boat, U-436, scored strikes on four vessels. He damaged two American ships and sank one of the British escorts and an old Canadian whaling ship called Sourabaya.

Bic Island responded to the distress call of the Sourabaya and stopped to pick up survivors. In doing so she fell behind and began to straggle from the tight formation of the convoy. As daylight came the attackers moved out of range but followed their prey into the night of the 28th. Under cover of darkness they popped up again, came upon the already limping American ship SS Gurney E. Newlin and pumped two more torpedoes into her bows. As the ship started to go down the Captain ordered the lifeboats over the side into a dark rough sea. Once more Bic Island came to the rescue still picking up survivors into the hours of dawn. By now she was lagging well behind the main convoy and well down in the water.

Hans-Karl Kosbadt had just taken command of U-224 in June of that year and this was his first patrol. It should have been obvious to him that Bic Island was on a mercy mission but he decided to attack. Two torpedoes and within minutes the Canadian tanker with its entire crew and the men they had rescued were at the bottom of the dark waters of the Atlantic. Mercy was not high on Kosbadt’s agenda.

Two and a half months later, just off the coast of Algiers in the Mediterranean, mercy was not high on the agenda of HMCS Ville de Quebec. The date was January 13th and the Wolfpack were now, themselves, being hunted. Ville de Quebec had been one of the Canadian escort vessels trying to pick up survivors back in October. They now had in their sights the submarine that had cruelly picked off the rescue ship. They came in hard and fast and rammed U-224 and as it submerged they surrounded it with depth charges. All but one of the forty-six crew died.

Had he known of this vengeful sequel it would have been small consolation to Bobby’s father. About the middle of February he received the official communication from the Canadian government that his son had been lost at sea. It was doubly cruel for the old man as it was addressed to Donald and Mary Black. One by one his family was being stolen from him. And now Bobby, killed by a submarine. Donald had spent most of his life making submarines. What cruel irony! Only Donnie was positively alive and he was now too busy with his own young family to come and visit an old man in Oban. Ian was somewhere in Poland and old Donald didn’t believe that he would come home despite the optimism of his young woman, Christina. She visited him sometimes to keep him up to date with the news. Her last visit was just after he had received the news about Bobby

Donald Black’s health started to slide. At the age of 76 he shrunk into a geriatric cocoon and died not many weeks later. When Teenie wrote to Ian and he eventually got her letter it came as a hammer blow. Like always it was great to receive and open a letter from home. But the moment he read the first few lines the world just crumpled in around him. It had taken Teenie three hours and ten scrapped attempts to write the letter. How do you tell someone who has next to nothing that the two rocks supporting him are gone? How do you try to substitute and become the rock to replace them? It wasn’t a role that came easily to Teenie. At home she had to work hard but she always had her mother, her father, brothers and sisters. Despite all her attempts to soften the blows they came like the two torpedoes that sank Bobby’s boat.

But somewhere in Teenie’s letter he found the spark of hope, maybe just a few words, maybe the fact that she still cared about him, maybe the curious way she signed off “Affectionately Christina”. Spring was breaking into summer and the smaller camp at Konitz was, although equally Spartan, less depressing than the oppressive atmosphere at Podgorz. The work was not difficult. The guards and prisoners had, over the years, found an accommodating middle ground. They were not exactly friends but the barked commands had practically disappeared and the silly tricks campaign had long since lost its humour and purpose. All of the prisoners desperately wanted to go home but they had become more resolute. They had never heard the popular song “The White Cliffs of Dover” but the lyrics could have been written just for them “…tomorrow, when the world is free.”

Konitz was Ian’s longest single stay in any of the camps, nearly two years in all, during which time the camp grew steadily in size. A contingent of Australians came from the battlefronts of Italy and several other British prisoners were moved out of the base camp at Podgorz. In the second half of 1942 the Germans began to take seriously the impending threat from Russia and needed the prisoners out so that they could fortify Torun. Austerity was biting deeper for the Germans and the Poles while for the prisoners the flow of parcels from home and the Red Cross supplies were now regular. Lately there was a feeling that some things were being pilfered by the guards but on a small scale.

In the summer of 1944 they saw lots of German soldiers, young and old, heading east towards the Russian front and many of the guards were being transferred also. Bob Shand was becoming restless. He could foresee what was about to happen.

“The Russians will push the Germans back to Berlin and we’ll get caught in the middle. There’s nobody really watching us now. I think it’s time to make our move and get out. Are you coming Ian?”

“Where will we go that’s any better than here?” answered Ian. “We have more food than they have and things are OK.”

“Yes. Things are OK now but what will happen when the Russians come? They’ll shoot everything in front of them. We can head down to the Black Sea and catch a boat somewhere. There’s bound to be something. Anyway it’s better than just sitting waiting. I don’t fancy having to tramp all the way back to Berlin. I don’t think we have long now; you can smell it in the air. They’re all running around crazy.” Bob was determined to go.

“Hell, that’s hundreds of miles, Bob. No, I think we’re better staying put. Our boys are winning in France and they’ll push the whole show through this way fairly fast.” Ian wasn’t so keen on breaking loose. He wanted home like everybody else but even after all this time they weren’t really sure about the lie of the land. Maybe they’d walk straight into the Russian lines.

But Bob was determined. “I don’t think our lads will come this far. They’ll let the Russians do the dirty work.”

So off he went, looking for someone else of like mind to take a chance heading south towards Odessa on the Black Sea coast of Ukraine. He had heard of a few boys who had gone home that way in the last year or so. He had picked up some working clothes and had taken some letters from a Latvian mechanic who came to repair the tractors. His German was better than the others and he felt he could carry it off. He calculated that the main Russian push would come from Moscow across Belarus and down the Baltic from Stalingrad through Latvia and Lithuania. He found another prisoner to go with him and like the birds at the end of summer they went south. Ian Black stayed behind in Camp XXA (124).

By late autumn of that year the last of the grain harvests were all in and on their way to support the Reich. The potatoes and fruit harvests were all in store and there only remained the sugar beet, a harvest for the first days of winter frost. They worked out in the fields from morning roll call until dusk so each man had his little squirrel’s pack of Red Cross morsels to sustain him through the day. Sometimes they could exchange things with the local Polish people for bread or fruit and although they were not supposed to speak to locals, Ian had over the years learnt enough Polish to supplement signals and gestures.

One Friday they sat down in a field for mid-day break and he took from his pocket a black bread “sandwich” filled with corned beef. A young Polish lad was watching him enviously so he broke off a piece to offer the boy. The boy’s hand went out to catch it and then suddenly stopped. He backed away in panic, eyes flicking left and right.

“It’s alright,” assured Ian “It’s British not German.”

“I can’t,” the boy stuttered, “It’s Friday. I can’t eat meat on Friday. The priest will…” The words trailed off.

“Oh, don’t be bloody stupid son! Eat it! Nobody is going to see.”

The boy’s hand shot out and he grabbed and scoffed the meaty bread before any priest, God or the Devil could see what he’d done but the discomfort remained on his face and Ian felt that he might have been better to have enjoyed the meat himself.

A couple of weeks later the first snow fell and they retreated to the “warmth” of the wooden huts. In November the news had started to seep through that the tides of war were definitely turning. Germany now was fighting on two major fronts and losing ground on both. There was a feeling around that this would be the last winter in captivity. The main concern now, however, was, as Bob Shand had said, that they were nearer to the Russian front than to the advancing Allies in the west. Neither the guards nor the prisoners wanted to be around when the Russians came. They had heard too many stories.

In the days leading up to Christmas there was a distinct softening in the tone and treatment from the guards. They were trying to develop a “good chums” atmosphere, in part to protect themselves from future reprisals but also in the hope of picking up something from the Red Cross goodies. As the snow and the cold began to bite again it was warmer in the huts exchanging stories from home and showing well-thumbed photos of loved ones than patrolling the perimeter wire. Who was going to escape into the winter wilderness?

The musical instruments were taken out of store. The camp band was formed and concerts arranged. Christmas carols were sung and the Wehrmacht joined in the chorus with the original words of “Stille Nacht!”

One of the singers, known to the prisoners by his first name of Dieter, reminded them that there would be an English church service on Sunday.

“And I suppose you will have a service in German,” remarked Ian, “What will you be praying for Dieter?”

“I will pray for victory for the Fatherland and you will be praying for victory for England.”

“Well there doesn’t seem much point in praying. God can’t give us both victory. Can he?”

“Perhaps it doesn’t matter who has victory now if this thing would just come to an end. I have heard that some of us will be going to the Russian front next week. Maybe I should pray that it isn’t me. Would you share that prayer with me?”

“I have stopped praying, Dieter. I just take what comes.”

21. CARTWHEELS IN THE SNOW

Poland to Germany, January 1945

The snow stopped Napoleon when he decided to invade Russia. The snow stopped Hitler outside Moscow in the winter of 1941. The snow didn’t stop Stalin when he decided to push the Germans out of Russia, out of Poland and Czechoslovakia back into Germany. The Russian soldier is a hard vicious fighting man, harder even than the Scottish Highlander. In sub-zero temperatures across hostile, blizzard swept, landscapes they plunged west, killing or being killed, destroying but not themselves being destroyed, relentlessly fighting mile by mile through Eastern Europe. By mid-January 1945 they were just a few miles east of Torun with the rumble of mortar shells audible to anyone still in Stalag XXA. They had been expected for some time and most of the prisoners were out in satellite camps. Ian Black was still at Konitz.

During the night of the 19th of January the Kommandant at Torun received an order to leave the next day with all the prisoners and head north and west to Bromberg and on to the camp at Nakel. The operational order had been put in place several months before but the camp was now under new command and adequate preparations had not been made. A hasty decision was taken to leave the worst hospital cases behind. Then panic and confusion replaced the carefully planned operational order. The following three months have been compared by some to Dante’s Inferno but the first weeks were cold, cold beyond imagination.

German families and possessions were loaded onto trucks along with provisions for the first days. These rapidly bogged down in the slush and mud and were replaced where possible by horse drawn sledges. An enormous column, five-a-breast trudged out of Podgorz over the bridge to Torun and turned north to Bromberg and walked about 25 miles the first day. Various forms of shelter were sequestered and they slept reasonably well. It was discovered that their planned destination of Nakel, 15 miles west, had been overrun by the Russians. The increase in panic was exponential. A rapid change was made and the route swung to the north. Two days later Ian Black and friends found that the “Raus! Raus! Raus! Alles aus!” had returned in force as they quickly packed a few belongings and joined the juggernaut as it passed through Konitz.

The Stalag was now almost completely on the road except for one or two of the smaller camps had fallen to the Russians and the sick men left behind in Torun. However, the guards had now lost contact with their central command and knew only that they had to move quickly to Stettin on the German Polish border. All wheeled transport was abandoned and the prisoners had to carry much of what was needed for the hike. Many of the prisoners were walking in wooden clogs with rags wrapped around the bottom leg to keep out the snow. Ian was luckier than some. He had carefully preserved his boots throughout the four and a half years of captivity. With his handyman skills he’d patched, stitched and mended soles and uppers and had used discarded pieces of fat to protect and waterproof the leather.

His socks too were in good order, darned regularly with the patent needle, and he had some spares. He hadn’t taken much along, just some clothes, as much Red Cross rations as he could find and the photo of Teenie. He didn’t take her letters. He had kept them all but now the photo was enough, signed like all the letters “With affection, Christina.” Despite the panic there was a feeling of optimism. Stalag XXA was behind them and they were walking home. These were men who had marched many miles, men who were trained to march. Walking home from Poland to Britain didn’t seem so unusual. They would get there eventually. But the Germans were in much more of a hurry. They weren’t just going home but running from the Russians. He wondered what had become of Bob Shand. At least it would be warmer where he had gone.

Ian’s first night on the road was an abrupt shock to his optimism. The vast column was now breaking up into units of about two to three hundred prisoners each with twenty to thirty guards. German family members and the administrative personnel formed their own ambulant groups. The plan was to occupy barns by the roadside and for most groups this worked out OK, but the farming community had never planned to provide accommodation for a moving mass of nearly fifty thousand people. The snow was over a foot deep and still falling. Night came down and everyone was beginning to drag his feet in sheer exhaustion. With no barn in sight the group halted for the night in a wood by the roadside. The perennial potato soup was drummed up, more welcome than it had ever been, augmented by some nibbles from the Red Cross supplies.

They lay down among the trees, damp, cold and miserable. Within half an hour it became obvious that very few could sleep and those that did were unlikely to wake up. Frostbite also was going to claim a few fingers and toes. It is not known who came up with the idea but they separated into groups of about thirty and lay down in tight formation in a circle with their feet in the middle. In this way they formed “cartwheels” in the snow and sustained an adequate measure of body temperature to make it through the night. Morning eventually came and still damp, still cold, still miserable with hands, feet and brain frozen numb, they rose to a breakfast of “delicious” potato soup. Some didn’t drink it; they just cuddled the warm dish till it started to freeze.

The column of human misery plodded on. Place names are neither known nor relevant. Even the Kommandant, when interviewed at the end of the war, wasn’t able to give an accurate account of the route taken. The truth is that each group took its own route. The guards had maps but not all the roads were marked and in the snow there was nothing to distinguish a farm track from the main road. When they came on a town with a phone they tried to make contact for precise instructions but the Russians were advancing fast and penetrating in an irregular front so that abrupt changes were often required to avoid contact. The panic of the guards began to border on hysteria. Rifle butts were used to cajole tardy prisoners into moving faster. With so many route changes, physical exertion and the lack of solid food, the daily mileage rate became less. Some days they walked thirty miles but advanced perhaps only fifteen. The character of the guards changed profoundly.

One week into the march some of the men weakened immensely. The guards threatened to shoot anyone who fell behind. It was not clear at the time and has never been satisfactorily explained to this day, why exactly the German command decided to haul along the prisoners as they abandoned Poland. Surely it would have made more sense to leave them behind, maybe to slow up the Russians a little but certainly it would have enabled them to escape back to Germany faster. As the march continued most of the younger guards were sent to bolster the retreating Russian front and were replaced by SS. This meant that the panic was on the one hand replaced by ruthless thuggery and on the other by the increase in the older guards’ panic, increased because they were now afraid of both the Russians and the SS. The rifle butts became more frequent.

Brown snow or white snow, what’s the difference? White snow is as it falls naturally and can be heated and melted to provide drinking water. Brown snow is where another group have slept the night before and takes its colour from the diarrhoea and dysentery of the less fortunate members of the group. Brown snow is not recommended for melting and drinking. If it hasn’t been properly boiled it guarantees the contagion of the recipient. Unfortunately, tired, thirsty, hungry and fumbling in the dark, it was difficult for prisoners to distinguish these sensibilities. Stomach disorder became rampant and pneumonia and other chest complaints became frequent. The cure was simple. For the minor cases a solid rifle butt in the shoulders ensured that normal speed was resumed. For more serious cases the other end of the rifle was more effective. When someone fell too far behind a guard fell back with him. The shot was gently muffled in the snow and the guard returned to take his place in the trek westwards.

The original route of ordered withdrawal was completely changed and the objective of Stettin was abandoned. It could be seen clearly that the Russians were beating a path straight for Berlin to get there before the British or Americans and Stettin was in a direct line between Torun and Berlin. So, Stalag XXA tramped north towards the Baltic arriving at the beginning of February in the Pomeranian Gulf at the port of Swinemunde. Perhaps the plan by now was to make an escape to Denmark. Who knows? As they moved north they crossed paths with prisoners from Stalag XXB in Gdansk. The groups were supposed to stay apart but their coherence diminished as British, American, Australian, French and Russian prisoners joined the long straggling column as it entered Germany at the most northerly point possible.

The winter was one of the coldest in memory and one that was to be printed indelibly in the memory of every soldier or airman who walked from Poland to Germany. More nights were spent outside than in. The nights inside were in overcrowded sheds, barns, schoolrooms or anywhere that shelter could be found. Always, there was the putrid smell of human excrement and putrefying frostbitten wounds. Always the rifle butt to hurry things along. Always the trigger-happy zealot waiting to ease someone out of his misery. But the potato soup had stopped. In fact, all food had stopped. As January gave way to February there were still some boiled potatoes and the odd piece of bread but as the march disintegrated into a scramble for survival the provision of food disintegrated too.

More than half of the prisoners had bowel disorder; everybody had lice; many had pneumonia, pleurisy or chronic coughs. Nobody now had spare clothes in their bag; they had every possible garment on their bodies. Many died. How many? There is no way of knowing. Dead and dying alike were left by the roadside or curled up in the corner of the last barn. Nobody was taking any account of who lived or who died, who marched on or who escaped. Nobody cared. They just tramped on and on hoping that the sun would come up one morning and it would all be over. However, it seemed to be the younger men who perished first. Most of the men from Dunkirk and St. Valery were now in their late thirties and had been prisoners for nearly five years. They had learned to take what life dealt up, had learned just to plod on.

“Keep right on to the end of the road,

Keep right on to the end

Though you’re tired and weary, still journey on”

They all knew the Harry Lauder song well. Nobody had much compulsion to sing but the spirit remained alive even as the strength sapped from the body.

They kept on, into Germany, but this wasn’t the end. They still had to face Dante’s Inferno.

The bitter icy wind blew in from the Baltic as the endless train of foot traffic marched on through Swinemunde and into Germany. Ian’s birthday came and went but he didn’t notice. With each step that they escaped the oncoming Russians they moved nearer to the hailstorm of Allied bombing. Now they were marching day by day and receiving nothing to eat or drink. Everything was scavenged, begged or stolen. By mid-February 1945 nearly all prisoners who had been held in the northern part of Poland had now passed through Swinemunde. Most, like Ian, walked. Some came by ship from Gdansk. Some came in the ever-popular horse-box-train. From the South of Poland, the others went west via Czechoslovakia, Austria or by the bombed out city of Dresden.

The overall objective was to place all prisoners in the area just west of Berlin probably as a negotiating pawn in the final armistice agreement with the Allies. The reality was that the prisoners marched between columns of active troops and the further west they walked the greater the danger from their own planes. Ian and his friends trudged on. As they left Swinemunde the snow swirled in once again. They ploughed on some twenty miles each day, sometimes forward, sometimes back a few miles, sometimes stopped for hours while the guards argued about which way to go. They crossed the River Peene at Anklam and experienced their first buzz by Allied aeroplanes. The guards with families insisted that the prisoners take their children and carry them across the bridges.

They crossed the Peene again twice at Demmin as the guards misread their maps. They turned south to Neubrandenberg only to swing back north again then west heading for Schwerin at the north of Luneburg Heath. They didn’t speak much now. Speech, like all movement, was painful. But the tight little groups remained basically intact. Ian Black and Bob Potter battled on, helping each other, encouraging each other, just being there as a recognisable balaclava in the sea of walking balaclavas. Then came the first day warm enough to remove the balaclavas, quite difficult and painful, intertwined as they were with their long hair. Nobody had shaved for weeks so they double-checked that they had the right person. Unshaven, filthy, pockmarked, gaunt faces. Faces of ghosts still walking, refusing to lie down and die.

They arrived at a large army camp in Zarrentin in Meklenburg on Luneburg Heath on the last day of February. They were now back in the control and command of the Stalag administration. They stayed here a week, slept on the bare earth but rested a little and received a few meagre rations. The Red Cross had access here so some supplementary parcels were received. Here at Zarrentin the entity of Stalag XXA finally ended and the prisoners were handed over to the control of the SS. The march then continued via Domitz on the Elbe where the old camp guards went into frontline service and the prisoners went further south for new work opportunities.

In a giant swathe across middle Germany the Allies were now bombing daily and heavily, smashing up production facilities, transport and military installations. The prisoners were destined for work in the repair of railway tracks and marshalling yards that had been destroyed. This was a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention but the command was now SS and the guards mostly fanatical Hitler Youth. From Domitz they plodded south about one hundred miles and then spread out around Hanover, Hamlin, Brunswick and Magdeburg. Some went into railyards to work, some into overcrowded prison camps and some went round in circles. Ian Black had no idea where he was. He only knew that as the British and American planes screamed down, bombing and strafing anything that looked military, it was not a good idea to stand and wave them “good luck”. Best get down and move as far from the column as possible hoping that the next bullet missed him and got the “little shit in the brown shirt”.

At the beginning of April, they were at Hamlin, city of pied pipers and fairy tales. They never repaired any railway tracks but the rail yard where they slept was bombed twice and several prisoners were killed. The sweeps of bombing were incessant followed always by a hail of bullets as the same planes swept back in for a second run with .50 calibre machine guns blazing, twelve per plane laying down a carpet of death. This was kept up for two days and on the third a new sound was heard: artillery fire and tank cannon. White flags began to sprout from the windows and balconies of the city and the guards went into grade five hysteria.

22. I’D WALK A MILLION MILES

Germany, April-May 1945

The bridges were always the worst. So many people and so many vehicles trying to cross at the same time. The advancing Allied forces needed the bridges in order to push quickly into Germany and the retreating Germans destroyed the bridges to stop them. Ahead of each advancing column US and British aircraft attacked each bridge spraying it with bullets and enveloping it in “surround sound” bombing. The fanatical SS demolition squads were not deterred, neither by this bombardment nor by the thought of killing innocent people on the bridges that they blew up.

The main player in this push towards Berlin was the US 3rd Army and in particular the US 5th Armored Division. This unit was activated on October 1st 1941 at Fort Knox in the state of Kentucky. Two years earlier at the start of the war when Rommel forced the Scottish 51st Highland Division into surrender at St. Valery his was known as the “ghost division”. He had a ticket to move freely and fast so nobody knew where he would appear next. By 1945 the name of “Patton’s Ghosts” became attached to the US 5th Armored, firstly because the unit came together and was trained in secrecy but mostly because like Rommel they moved fast and appeared unexpectedly several miles ahead of where they ought to be. They came ashore on the beaches of Normandy twenty days after D-day. They didn’t fight their way up the beaches; that wasn’t their purpose.

Their mission was to sweep far into France and later Germany, split up the enemy, cut communications by road, rail and cable, attempt to spread hysteria everywhere, capture all the military equipment they could, and if possible, get back home to Mom. This unit was so far removed in concept from the 51st Highland Division of 1939 that comparison is impossible. They took the German Blitzkrieg concept and honed it to merciless perfection.

The unit comprised three heavily armoured infantry battalions, three artillery battalions, three tank battalions, a tank destroyer battalion, two massive quartermaster truck battalions to maintain upfront supplies, a battalion responsible for the maintenance of the ordnance equipment and even its own specialist POW interrogation team. They had their own battalion of sappers to rebuild the bridges that blew up in their faces. On top of this they had integrated air support with constant radio contact. Each commander had radio contact with each piece of rolling stock. They could pull up infantry or artillery support to the front within minutes, pull back again within seconds, call in and direct close aerial bombardment more or less on demand, ask for aerial reconnaissance then punch through mile after mile into hostile territory knowing that behind them was co-ordinated support.

They were the first division to reach the River Seine in France in August 1944.

They were the first division to enter Belgium

They were the first division to reach Luxemburg.

They were the first division to fight on German soil.

They were the first division to break through the Siegfried Line.

In February and March 1945 they spearheaded Patton’s 3rd Army as they thrashed a route from the Ruhr to the Rhine.

They learned the hard way that the fight was hard. They lost a lot of young men along the way. A lot of bridges blew up before their eyes leaving cement dust in their hair but they picked out a new route and moved on. They plunged forward scattering panic and hysteria before them as they went. The Division was made up of three Combat Commands, each of which combined tank, artillery and infantry strength with superb lines of command. On the 31st of March they were poised to go again, 260 miles in 13 days, fast forward with a few side steps they had to cross the River Weser and then the Elbe and they would be on the Autobahn into Berlin.

Patton’s Fifth Armored Division thundered forward 50 miles the first day, 200 tanks, 3000 heavily armed infantrymen and three battalions of mobile artillery. The second day they blasted through and around mile after mile of roadblocks, booby traps and tank columns. The division ploughed on leaving in its wake by the roadside, burnt out tanks and trucks, dead German soldiers, dead horses and dead cows. It was a moving island crashing through a hostile landscape; seen from a distance it was a swirling cloud of dust and smoke. At the end of the second day they had moved forward twenty miles more and come night crawled forward yet some more, the lead tanker straining his eyes to find the road and those behind straining their eyes to follow the pin-point lights of the tank in front.

In the morning of the third day they stopped to await refuelling. Behind them lay the city of Munster. Tank crews spread out on the wet grass and grabbed some sleep. They slumbered through the rattle and clang of refuelling and the rumble of artillery hitting Munster. The noise that woke them was the sound of the tanks revving, ready to go again. The nearest crossing of the Weser was at the city of Hereford. They side stepped the town and went for the bridges. They split in two task forces, one for the bridge at Hereford and the other a few miles north at Minden. Both bridges were blown by the Germans just as they approached and on the third day they stood clicking their heels on the south side of the Weser. At Minden the British had already arrived earlier and like so many times before the German forces pulled all they could across the bridge and as the attackers approached they blew the bridge in their faces. At Hereford it was the Americans who got cement dust in their hair. The 5th Armored Division had to wait. Waiting made them nervous. Three days seemed like a year but they got some badly needed sleep.

Unknown to the advancing liberators a new complication lay ahead. From south of the Weser to north of the Elbe about two hundred thousand prisoners of war were spread across the length and breadth of Luneburg Heath, an area not unlike the lowlands of Scotland. To capture a bridge, the advancing forces had to put down horrific covering fire, lateral bombing, strafing from the air, artillery air bursts above the bridge in the hope of creating panic among those preparing to blow the bridge. So while escaping troops, civilians and prisoners were still crossing, the would be liberators had to risk innocent lives and in the meantime the SS demolition teams laid their charges with total disregard for who was on the bridge. Terror and panic intensified.

Hereford lies on the elbow of a sharp bend in the River Weser. Ten miles to the north lies Minden and ten miles east lies the city of Hamlin. Here at Hamlin the straggling column of POWs were crossing the bridge in a never-ending stream, pushed aside by Panzer columns and marching infantry as everyone scrambled to get over before the SS blew the old bridge. Bob Potter and Ian Black were nearly over when the first P-47 bombers growled overhead. They dropped their bombs either side of the bridge, soared into the sky and swung back round low over the bridge with guns blazing. The Americans desperately needed this bridge intact. There had been advance reconnaissance so now the pilots knew what was on the bridge. They knew there were helpless POWs and civilians but they knew also that the SS demolition squad were moving into place. Some prisoners ran back, some ran forward, some were caught in the middle. Ian ran the last few yards and dived to the sides of the road as the planes screamed over.

While the 5th Armored Division hung in limbo further north the 2nd US Armored Division were competing with the 5th to get some glory ribbons and were heading for the bridge at Hamlin. As the bomber flight banked away back towards the west the Americans opened up with heavy artillery. The shells were aimed as air bursts above the bridge. The effect was terrifying for anyone in the vicinity but it didn’t stop the demolition squad. As another bridge went “boom” the prisoners got up and ran once again. It was crazy. They were running away from the troops that were going to free them but what could they do?

In came the 30th US Infantry and the Treadway Bridge Company. While the POWs started marching north, back the same way they had come just two weeks before, the sappers put in place a new makeshift bridge and the 2nd Armored Division took over the Pied Piper’s town. The word was passed down the line: they had a bridge over the Weser. On the 8th of April the 5th Armored Division, who had powered their way east nearly in a straight line, were ordered south round the elbow to Hamlin. They crossed the pontoon bridge by nine o’clock that night. By next morning they were abreast of Hanover on the east-west autobahn. The POW column by now was more to the north, plodding back towards Domitz, some including Ian’s group were hoping to cross the Elbe at Hitzacker about sixty miles north of Hanover. Others went more east towards Wittenberge, Stendal and Taggermunde, nearer to Berlin, everybody scrambling to go nowhere.

A few hours into the morning of the 9th the group that Ian was with crossed the Mittelland canal bridge north of Hanover. The Americans were approaching fast behind them but as they reached the canal they were slowed down by heavy artillery fire. They called in the usual air support but it faltered due to heavy cloud and mist. While they were stopped fending off the attack another bridge went “boom” in their faces. Combat Command R of the Victorious 5th would not be stopped. Abrupt right turn for this juggernaut wasn’t easy and another diversion didn’t sit well with men who were accustomed to moving forward but they made a swift swing to the right. The first town of Peine surrendered without a fight and the Command drove on. After Peine they swung north again for ten miles and then east zigzagging ever nearer to the Elbe.

The itinerant group of prisoners had a couple of quieter days until they reached Hitzacker on the Elbe, on the evening of the 10th of April. They were halted while the SS packed yet another bridge with explosives and blew it into the air in front of them. Their route across the Elbe to Domitz was now blocked. The guards went into a frenzy shouting at the prisoners for being too slow and threatening to shoot everybody. They eventually calmed down and realised that they would have to go southeast down the banks of the river and try to cross at Wittenberge.

On the morning of the 12th Combat Command A drove due east from Hanover heading for an Elbe crossing at Taggermunde just 45 miles from Berlin. When they got there the bridge was blown. That just left Combat Command R heading for the bridge at Wittenberge, the only bridge still standing. As fate drew XXA and the 5th Armored together, neither knew that this would be their last bridge and that in the coming days, while one would weep tears of joy the other would weep tears of bitter frustration.

The prisoners were now at and beyond their natural limits of endurance. Back in Hamlin they had raided the schrebbergarten allotments by the railway track, pulling small seedling vegetables from the earth by the roots and eating them on the spot. Some still had a few tiny carrots or turnips but they were excruciatingly difficult to digest for these men whose stomachs had adapted to eating nothing for days on end. Moral was at the lowest point since they left Poland in January. Now, in the middle of April, they had thrown aside their greatcoats and balaclavas. Ian had thrown away everything except what he had in his pockets, not very much except the photo of Christina.

They had no idea where they were going or why. They wanted to turn and meet the oncoming Americans but they knew that this was more dangerous than running with the Germans. They started to believe that they wouldn’t come out of this mess alive. Each day brought new terrors. Each day their physical state ebbed away. Each day their minds grew closer to the brink, closer to the point of giving up.

On the night of 11th April they slept in the fields outside the town of Politz, just a few miles from the bridge at Wittenberge. Thousands of prisoners of all nationalities, active German troops and civilian refugees were all converging on the last bridge. In the morning of the 12th they set off towards the bridge. Ian’s boots that had served so well were now falling apart. He tied a rag round one of the soles to stop it falling off and flapped on. Progress was slow, not just because of bad footwear. So many people converging on a town, crossing just one bridge, brought things to a grinding snail’s pace. Everybody pushed and shoved, women, children, soldiers, prisoners, handcarts, bicycles, tanks, jeeps, animals all thronged across the Elbe knowing that the Americans were just down the road and coming fast. The people of the town stayed put, better the Americans than the Russians, but the moving mass that had come from the east had nowhere to stay.

The 5th Armored boys were slowed down a little at a village south of Wittenberge. The accompanying Cub spotter planes came upon a column of American prisoners who spelled out “USA” on the earth with packs and clothing. Combat Command R charged into the village, freed their comrades, fed them chocolate bars and tobacco, exchanged hugs and hellos and then rolled on towards Wittenberge. They nudged along the southwest ridge of the river exchanging intense fire with the Germans. By early afternoon they were about half a mile from the bridge.

Three quarters of the way across, Ian tripped on the loose sole of his boot. Down he went and pulled himself into a huddle at the edge of the bridge. Bob Potter and the others were carried along by the mass of bodies. The bombers swept in from the west. This time they didn’t drop bombs on the first run; they’d already dropped them at Magdeburg further south. They skimmed down spitting out bullets from their twelve machine guns. Like at Hamlin those at the front and the back ran clear of the bridge. Bob got clear but Ian huddled tighter to the parapets of the bridge as he watched bodies rip apart in the hail of bullets. He started to shudder uncontrollably. He looked down at his boots and started to cry. All these years he’d taken such loving care of his boots and now they were falling apart on his feet.

The B-26s banked left and right and came round a second time either side of the bridge strafing the outside and under the bridge, trying to dislodge the demolition men laying their charges underneath.

There comes a moment for people under extreme danger and stress that the brain ceases to function normally. Some people disregard the danger and charge on. Some just give up. Some manage to find that extra spark in supernatural ways. Ian Black had just given up. He sat there sobbing at the state of his boots waiting for the next hail of bullets. Suddenly he stopped sobbing and started laughing hysterically. Looking at his crumbling footwear he remembered his brother Bobby so many years ago when he raced in bare feet, when the big lad spiked him but he still won the race. He heard his mother’s voice calling,

“Run lad! Run! Run, Bobby! You can do it.”

His mother was here now. She had come to help him.

He could see her face clearly now. She was smiling gently.

“Mammy!”

“Run, Ian lad, run! You can do it” she chided him as her face slipped out of view.

He stood up, ripped the errant sole off his boot and ran. He drew, from his ragged body, the last remnants of strength. The P-47s droned back in and he put in a final spurt jumping over dead and dying bodies. Someone caught his foot and pulled him down. It was a young German kid. A panzer tank roared up behind him and he caught the kid, ducking to the side as the tank passed through and over the human mass. Ian picked up the kid and ran. The P-47s droned in closer and back at the beginning of the bridge they started coughing out a curtain of bullets. Ian was nearly over, just a few yards to go. There was a thunderous bang and boards, girders and concrete soared into the sky. As the middle sections of the bridge disintegrated Ian scrambled the last few yards and ran towards his mates on the other side.

As he got to them, he laid the kid down, stretched his arms out and wriggled his fingers like Al Jolson.

“I’d walk a million miles for one of your smiles, my Ma-a-a-m-m-y!” he sang.

They thought he’d lost the plot entirely. Two of them caught one arm each and hauled him along.

“You daft bastard!” chibbed Bob Potter, “We thought we’d lost you.”

Ian just smiled at his friends, fell in step and trudged on, hoping that the inner sole of the boot would hold out.

Half a mile down wind of the bridge the concrete dust settled on the tanks of Combat Command R of the 5th Armored Division, US 3rd Army. The men shook their heads in disbelief. They were so sure that this one was theirs. Major General Lunsford E. Oliver wasn’t just sure. He knew the bridge was his. He knew he was going to be first in Berlin. He didn’t accept the news that the bridge was lost.

“Get the Treadway boys to build another one!” he commanded.

But the Treadway boys were way back down the line and the forward unit had insufficient material. The Elbe at Wittenberge was as wide as the Rhine. However next day the German Commander of Wittenberge surrendered without a battle and volunteered to replace the bridge. Oliver was ecstatic. Next stop Berlin! Or so he thought.

Meanwhile the 9th Army had crossed the Elbe further south at Magdeburg but they too were stopped. On the 12th of April President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia, USA. Harry Truman took his place. The commander of the Allied troops was General Dwight Eisenhower. He also had political ambitions. The Germans would never surrender Berlin without a fight and it was believed that upwards of 200,000 American servicemen would lose their lives. Best to let the Russians take it. Who made the final decision is another enigma of the time but on the day that Roosevelt died, the push for Berlin stopped.

Ian Black, meantime, trudged on towards nowhere. Five years of war had wreaked havoc across Europe. British, German, French, Russian, American. Nobody really won. They were all still just pawns in a cruel game.

But Ian Black’s “finest hour” was not far away. Freedom would come in time.

23. “WHERE YUH FROM BUDDY”

From the Elbe to Blighty, May 1945

After Wittenberge the push northwards slowed down. The columns of prisoners still on the south side of the Elbe were soon freed. Many in fact were freed in the first two weeks of April but for those who had crossed over there were a few more weeks to wait. The German command structure was in tatters. The 5th US Armored didn’t get to Berlin but they’d done their job. They had “split up the enemy, cut communications and spread hysteria. From this point on most towns and villages, army personnel and prison guards quickly surrendered. They were glad to see the whole thing coming to an end.

In the last days of April, Ian Black and Bob Potter were back near Schwerin where they had been in February and were waiting out their last moments of captivity. Having stopped, they now had some opportunity to get a little food however poor in quality. They were housed in a railway compound still under the guard of the fanatical Hitler Youth and SS with just a few old familiar Wehrmacht faces. There was one in particular that they all remembered well. They could all remember his rifle butt.

Guns rumbled in the distance and the guards grew edgy. The gunfire rumbled nearer. As the first American tank crashed through the perimeter wall, the guards dropped their guns and put their hands in the air. The prisoners went crazy. It is a story told so many times. “Somewhere in Germany a tank crashed through the wall and we were free”. The Americans handed out what rations they had to the gaunt figures.

“Any of these guys give yuh hassle?” asked one GI, pointing his machine gun menacingly at the trembling guards.

All eyes turned to the rifle-butter. His eyes flickered nervously and he turned to run away. He only got a few steps before he was pulled to the ground. Five years of pent up frustration was released from those who still had boots intact. A few minutes later the dead body lay in a bloody mass of pulp and the prisoners turned back to the cigarettes and chocolate bars babbling like little children.

The Americans chatted and joked with the filthy, ragged ex-prisoners.

“Where yuh from Buddy?” a black soldier asked Ian.

“Scotland. What about you?”

“Atlanta, Georgia, Buddy, home of Coca Cola.”

“What’s Coca Cola?”

“What’s Coca Cola?” echoed the GI. “Hey guys, Scotty here’s never heard of Coca Cola.” “Try it when yuh get back to England.”

Getting back to England wasn’t as fast as they hoped. Trucks came next day to take them to a massive field barracks at Luneburg. They were stripped, washed and deloused; hair was cut and they issued with varying bits and pieces of uniform. Ian got a pair of boots, a little on the big side but definitely better that the ones with the sole falling off. They got their first square meal in five years and couldn’t eat it. Nobody cared. They were like little kids. Excitement was fever pitch. Thousands of prisoners were scooped up and passed through Luneburg from mid-April until the beginning of May. Dakota aircraft flew everybody home but there was a pecking order. First the sick and injured, then the Americans because they owned the Dakotas, then officers and then the lads who’d been longest away from home, and then all the stragglers from the last groups to be freed. On the 7th of May Germany signed an unconditional surrender. On the 8th of May as all of Britain celebrated VE Day, Ian and the stragglers of XXA were on their way home from Germany.

It sounds so simple flying home but Ian and friends were terrified. First they had the pent up expectation, then the waiting, then their time came to board a Dakota. It was a shuddering, bone-shaking box with wings; no windows and nowhere to sit except the floor, which rattled with vibration. The plane took its place in line for take-off but there was some delay and then eventually it bumped its way to the end of the runway. The engines revved and the plane started to shake itself apart, or so it seemed. The ex-prisoners decided it might be better just to walk home. They’d make it in a month or two. This machine wasn’t going to make it into the air. It was about to disintegrate. And then they were up, across the devastated plains of Europe heading home, shuddering and shaking all the way.

Well, not quite all the way. The American Dakota just took them as far as Brussels to a British base. Another delousing, another half-eaten meal, another wait, another Dakota and they crossed the English Channel and the White Cliffs back to the land they had thought they would never see again. They landed at Wing in Buckinghamshire but they still weren’t home, not really home. They were trucked to an Army camp that had been set up to receive the homecoming prisoners. The army bureaucrats had gone into overdrive and streamlined the name and pack drill procedures.

First was another delousing, into a large Nissan hut and a tube with spray powder was stuck in trouser bottoms and sleeves. With all bugs killed they went to that night’s accommodation. Individual bunks, real sheets, real blankets, all clean. Then each man received a kit bag and full kit. Next stop the dining room for their first sit-down meal in five years. And then more Army formalities; repatriation documents had to be completed and then telegram forms were issued.

“Fill them up quickish like,” instructed a sergeant. “Tell your folks you’re back in Blighty and you’ll be going home tomorrow. Make it quick and we’ll get them away today.”

They were given some money to get them by the first weeks of liberty, told they were free to roam around but to be up sharp next morning. Free! Free! Free! No guards, no barked commands, no bombs, no bullets. Free! First a wash and a real shave and then full of silly childish elation, Ian went in search of the American NAAFI canteen to try some Coca Cola.

He found the canteen, which sported a sign saying “AMERICAN PERSONNEL ONLY”, but he decided to go in anyway. He walked up to the bar and asked for a Coca Cola.

“Sorry soldier. Ah can’t serve yuh, in here.”

A sergeant, who was leaning on the bar, turned round.

“What outfit yuh in, Buddy?”

“8th Argylls.”

“Where yuh been fightin’, then?”

“France, a long time ago. I’ve been in Poland four years, a prisoner.”

“Barman! Give this man his drink!”

The barman stood his ground, “He can’t drink in here if he’s not GI.”

The sergeant stood up and glowered at the little barman. “Ah said, give the man his drink. He’s with me. Ah’m buyin’, OK?”

Ian took his ice-cool Coca Cola and took a sip. It hit his raw stomach like a sledgehammer and his face winced. He knew he couldn’t drink it but couldn’t just leave it after nearly causing a battle in the American bar. He chatted to the sergeant and faked a few more sips then said he had to get back for a parade.

There was no parade, of course, just a beautiful lounge on a beautiful clean bed. Not alone, he lay shaking with excitement. Two minutes later, up again chatting to all the other ex-prisoners. Handshakes, backslaps, laughing, joking, promising to keep in touch with each other, everybody was euphoric. Even some of the lads who had hated each other back in the prison camp and on the march were now good friends. All the tensions and bitterness of years of frustrating captivity began to slip away and be replaced by a strange apprehensive joy and thoughts of home.

Morning came and names were called. A travel warrant, ration coupons (double ration coupons for returning prisoners) and a leave pass valid six weeks. A truck came and took them to the station. They travelled together into London and shook hands and parted. Most would never see each other again. Bob Potter was already home, back on the streets of London. Ian and a few others were heading north from Euston via Glasgow. There was an emotional goodbye as they stood in front of the station. Bob promised to come up to Benderloch for the wedding.

“D’you think she’ll still want you. You don’t look too pretty Jock”

Ian was down to about seven stones in weight, his face was gaunt and he still had a slice of hair missing down the right side of his head.

“You look a little scrappy yourself. Do they have scarecrows in London? Maybe you could get a job scaring the pigeons in Trafalgar Square.”

“Yeah, but we made it Ian, lad. There were times I thought I’d never see Trafalgar Square again.”

“Aye, Bob. Take care. “Beannachd leat!” Ian bid his friend farewell.

“Bennack late!” returned the Londoner.

Ian Black, laughed at the Cockney pronunciation, slapped Bob Potter on the back, threw his kit bags across his shoulder and went for the train. As they sped north, the euphoria of the day before started to slip away and in its place profound doubts, fear of this new-found freedom, not sure exactly what to do or what to say when they met people again. What they didn’t realise was that meeting people was not going to be their problem. The real trauma for nearly all returning prisoners was the conflict of emotions that they had just started to feel, one moment riding on the crest of a wave and then sinking into the trough of depression the next.

In Benderloch, Teenie MacKenzie received her telegram, squealed with delight and jumped on her bicycle down to the church to prepare the marriage banns.

The train rolled into Glasgow. Ian crossed the city to change stations and catch the first train north, to Oban. The West Highland train was crowded mostly by men in uniform. Most were going home on normal leave. Some like Ian were returning for the first time in years. The half-bottles of whisky and screw-top beer bottles were in good supply so the atmosphere was very Highland and the banter as much in Gaelic as in English. They were going home.

24. GET UP AND DANCE

Oban, 11th June 1945

By tradition marriage banns must be called in church for three successive Sundays before a wedding in Scotland. Teenie spoke with Alexander MacDonald, the Ardchattan Parish Minister and he agreed to officiate and the date was set for the 11th of June. The wedding would be held, not in the church at Ardchattan, but along with the reception in Kennedy’s Tearooms in Oban. This venue had a lower floor for the ceremony and reception and a dance floor. Upstairs was a balcony overlooking the dance floor with large windows looking out across Oban Bay.

When Ian came home he spent these weeks in Teenie’s house at Baravullin. The atmosphere was a mix of excitement and apprehension for the wedding, worry because there was still no news of brother Kenny and a distinct coolness from Teenie’s father, who had no real desire to give up his youngest daughter and housekeeper. Family and friends came around. Calum was home on leave and Katy’s husband Gillies had been repatriated a couple of weeks before Ian.

Ian tried to contact Bob Potter in London but he had disappeared into the throngs of chaotic post-war London. However, he had Bob Shand’s mother’s address in Forres so he sent a letter, not even sure that Bob was alive. But alive he was, and was delighted that Ian had remembered him. It had taken him four months to reach Odessa and he had arrived home just a couple of weeks before Ian. He agreed to come down to Oban to be best man.

The big day arrived and Ian Grieve Black aged 39 and Christina Carmichael MacKenzie aged 29 became man and wife. R. G. Shand was best man and Elizabeth Campbell, Teenie’s cousin, was bridesmaid. Jessie MacKenzie, George’s daughter, was flower girl and Donald MacKenzie reluctantly gave his daughter’s hand in marriage.

The minister proposed a toast in Gaelic and then said, “I will now repeat that in English for the benefit of the uneducated.”

The joke went down well with the locals and was received without too much rancour by the best man who was used to the Highlanders’ clannish ways although he couldn’t speak a word of Gaelic. After the minister had finished Bob had to read all the telegrams of congratulations from the family members who couldn’t get there. They were all in Gaelic and the Benderloch folk had a great laugh at his efforts.

The minister then turned to Teenie’s father, “Well, Donald MacKenzie, you always have plenty to say. Let’s have a few words from you.”

“Today, I have nothing to say,” came the tart reply.

Calum in the meantime had slipped out to get his accordion. He came back in to a loud cheer and played an Old Scottish Waltz. Ian took his bride up to dance. The floor slowly filled with friends and family, many of whom, like Ian, were still in service uniform. Ian and Teenie smiled happily as they waltzed around the floor. Ian shook one hand loose and touched his breast pocket. It was still there; the photo he had kept precious for the last four years. Today she was just as pretty as the photo.

The waltz finished, there was a shuffle of chairs and Uncle Dugald Black tottered up to stand beside Calum with a fiddle in his hand.

“Gentlemen take your partners please for a Highland Schottische.”

Donald MacKenzie sat grim faced while his wife Jessie was obviously keen to keep her long-standing promise to dance at Teenie’s wedding. George and his wife exchanged glances as they danced by. Annie quickly passed George to his mother who equally quickly took the opportunity to get up and dance. Annie leaned forward and spoke quietly but firmly in her father-in-law’s ear.

“Get up and dance, you old bugger. It’s your daughter’s wedding,” as she took his arm and hauled him to his feet.

They all whirled round the floor to the tunes of the Highland Schottische, Teenie’s favourite dance.

11th June 1945

EPILOGUE

This story is based on verifiable facts and all dates and places have been thoroughly checked. Some author’s licence has been used in order to bind together a readable story. All the characters are real and all of the principal characters bear their real names except little Tommy McCafferty and prisoner Pete Daly. Nearly all the buildings mentioned are still standing except the hutted prison camps. The branch railway line from Connel to Ballachulish is sadly gone and the bridge is now a road bridge.

Since I wrote the first edition of this book I managed to track down Bob Shand with the help of Tanya Gilbert of the Forres Gazette. He was living in Grantown on Spey and spending the winters in the Canary Islands. He told me that in the same week that his mother heard Bob was home she got a B104 to inform her that her younger son had been killed in action.

Ian Black died in 1984, and his brother Donald before that in 1972. Christina, my mother died aged 88 on 18th October 2004. She was still singing the old songs the last time I saw her before she died.

Kenny MacKenzie never returned to Benderloch. He died of pleurisy on April 2nd 1945 near the town of Bayreuth in Germany while still on the long march. The news was first broken to his mother by a friend in the street and Ian Black was sent south to investigate. The official notification did not come till much later in the year. I found no evidence that any of the 8th Argylls died on the march but Ian’s neighbour Duncan Ferguson was badly disfigured by rifle butting. Only one of the regiment died in captivity. One Barcaldine lad, Alistair Campbell, died in the battle at Belloy and is buried in the public cemetery there.

Of Dugald’s fiddles, three are still in the family. Donald never returned to claim his till around 1950 and it was given to his son (also Donald). My father’s fiddle is now owned by my elder brother, (also Donald) and my son and his wife received one as a wedding gift from my younger brother. There are four more out there somewhere, hopefully giving someone fun. The piece of mahogany at the beginning of the story was transformed, by Dugald, into an elegant walking stick.

Ian Black was not a happy man after the war and was not an easy father to grow up with, nor an easy husband to love. He could never forget. He could not put behind him all that had happened. He tried to tell us but we never really listened. Had we listened more, it might have helped a little. It would certainly have made this book easier to write.

Despite the difficult times Ian and Christina battled through (sometimes literally) and now they lie together at peace back home in the churchyard at Achnaba overlooking the loch.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the help of so many people. Limitations of space and memory prevent the inclusion of all contributors but below are some of those who merit special mention.

Several relations from near and far, notably:

Nichol Macleod of Welwyn Garden City, Maggie Winterborn from Appin, Donald Black of East Kilbride, Morvern Smith and Hector MacKenzie of Dunbeg, Oban, Lizzie Beaton of Kentallen and Mary Penning of Tasmania.

Old friends and old soldiers:

Geoff Bryden of Cambuslang, NT Quinn of Oban, WS Wood of
Livingston, Hugh MacFarlane of Barcaldine, Dennis McNeil of Appin. And Bob Shand, the friend from prison camp who stands smartly in army uniform as best man at the wedding of Ian and Teenie.

Fountains of information:

Phil Chinnery of NEXPOW, Rod MacKenzie of the Argylls’ Museum Stirling, Jeremy Inglis of Oban, Mrs J Broome of Jason Street, Barrow, Bill James of Canada, Ellis Carmichael of Oban, Krystina Malczewska of Torun, Poland, Freda Clark of Dunfermline, Will Cook of the 5th US Armored Division.

Web helpers:

Immense gratitude to the services of www.google.com and www.multimap.com for hundreds of little golden nuggets.

Closer to home:

All members of my family who helped with old photos, memory
searches, helpful comments and criticism.
ESPECIALLY MY WIFE, CATHERINE. As we left our rented car in a car park in Warsaw, Poland, she noticed that I had left ALL MY MANUSCRIPT leaning against a pillar.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

TEXTS

History of the 8th Argylls by Lt Col AD Malcolm

Churchill’s Sacrifice of the Highland Division by Saul David

The Last Escape by John Nichol and Tony Rennel

ESSAYS AND WEB DOCUMENTS

Memories of Baravullin Nichol Macleod

“C”Coy. 8th Argylls June 1940 Captain John Inglis (with notes by J.J.D. Inglis)

6th June 1940–9th May 1945 Diarmid H. Macalister-Hall

From the Rhine to the Elbe Anonymous soldier 5th US Armored Division

The 5th US Armored Division Karl-Heinz Heineke

Diary of a Prisoner of War Tom Brown

For you the War is Over Tommy Pte. WC Law

Lance-Corporal DE Parker Tom Parker

Death March Across Germany Gary Turbak

Journey to Odessa Jack Durey

PERIODICALS

The Newsletters of Ex-prisoner of War Association

OFFICIAL DOCUMENT SOURCES

Debriefing of Stalag XXA Kommandant 1945; Public Records Office WO 208/4656.

War Service Documents and letters (Ian Black); MOD Defence Records 2b.

Central Tracing Agency of the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC Geneva).

Online database of the War Graves Commission.

Various birth, death, marriage and census documents.

WEBSITES

These are just a few of the many web sites that provided a myriad of little snippets of detail.

www.cwcg.org (War Graves Commission)

www.multimap.com (Maps of Europe)

www.tartanhen.co.uk (Appin Murder)

www.submariners.co.uk (Barrow built submarines)

www.doverpages.co.uk (Battle of Dunkirk)

www.thehouseofice.com (Erwin Rommel)

www.warlinks.com (Memories)

www.houseoflochar.com (Livingstone clan)

www.electricscotland.com (Meggernie estate)

www.uboat.net (Convoy HX 212 and U-boat 224)

www.shipwrecksofscotland.com (SS Breda)

www.scotrail.co.uk (Rail networks)

www.winstonchurchill.org (Churchill’s speeches)

www.amatecon.com (Time-line of Great Depression)

www.bbc.co.uk (War time news)

http://prisonerofwar.freeservers.com (NEXPOW)