Ardnish Was Home Episode 7

Every day, one of the nurses, usually Louise, takes off my bandage and cleans my eyes with some vinegar. It stings like hell, as it involves opening my eyelids. Today, I think for the first time that maybe I can see light with my right eye, but my eyelids don’t want to stay open and I cast the thought from my mind.

The doctors tell me nothing, though it’s clear that my shoulder is well on the mend. I had big blisters on my face from the scalding water, but they have hardened and the scabs are coming off. Not a pretty sight, I know.

Although I talk to Louise about fishing or being a ghillie, we both know that with my ruined eyesight there is little chance of either. I take some comfort in thinking I could teach the pipes, like my father, and there should be an invalid pension, too.

Louise has a dog at home, which she loves. She hopes her little brother is looking after it. It’s a sheepdog called Daffie, which she rescued when it was the size of half a pound of butter.

The neighbours had despaired of finding a taker for it, and the puppy would have been drowned had Louise not claimed him for her own.

Abandonment

“It’s getting light,” Louise says. “I have to get things ready for breakfast. I hope there’s enough food for all the men. We need supplies soon.”

Thinking of her, I drift off into a fitful sleep. What do people mean when they talk about falling in love? Is it constant thought about the girl, the wish to touch her all the time, the feeling of abandonment when they move on, or you feel you are being ignored?

It’s not about marriage or children; it’s more immediate and personal than that. It’s deep inside. It’s raw and omnipresent.

Thinking about Louise drowns out the pain. All my contact with her is soothing, caring, considerate. I wonder what she thinks of me. She makes me feel special – would she do all that she does for me if I wasn’t special? The question tortures my every waking hour.

It is a problem: the nurses have had it drummed into them that getting emotionally attached to a patient is a disaster. He may be married, or he will get better and leave.

Or even worse, he will die. In my case, I’m an unattractive redhead with two very serious injuries. I may not die now, but I will be disabled for life. Not the sort of person who would win her heart.

Nevertheless, I yearn to tell her that she is the one for me and that we will run off together, that the hours are painful without her, and that when I sense her pass by without stopping, my heart lurches.

I want her to sit beside me and tell me more of her life. But if she shows me any affection, I’m scared that my feelings will all spill out and everything will be ruined, that she will be posted elsewhere.

“Bottle it up,” I tell myself again and again. “Say nothing.”

I have fallen in love with her though, there is no doubt of that.

Pick of their villages

Can it only be four months ago that we embarked? It had gone from summer in Britain to the heat of Egypt to the freezing wet winter of Turkey. The Lovat Scouts saw 1,200 of the best Highland men – young, eager, the pick of their villages – now reduced to half that number.

The ones I come across in the tent are often about to die. They come from Applecross and Beauly, from Uist to Skye. Their communities will suffer greatly by the wiping out of their young men. The cities are cushioned – incomers will soon fill the houses or take the jobs.

But in the Highlands, like my own Ardnish, the death of only two or three young men would result in a huge area becoming unpopulated within a generation.

The war in Gallipoli had been going badly. General Hamilton wanted more troops. We had been expecting to go to the Western Front, but we all agreed that Turkey sounded better. In early August 1915, two regiments of us Lovat Scouts were loaded onto a ship called RMS Andania at Devonport.

The mood amongst the men was high. We enjoyed the summer sun on deck, playing cards, eating well and enduring the endless exercises the sergeants put us through.

Three weeks later, we were in Malta for refuelling and to take on supplies, when we discovered that the ship alongside had many injured from the Scottish Horse regiment. Several of our men went across and talked to them. Our boys were shocked by what they heard: pointless attack after pointless attack trying to gain precious ground, with Turkish machine-gunners placed at the top of the hills with unrestricted views down onto our position.

Of the 700 in the regiment, two thirds would get killed or injured in a single push. And the lack of water was critical. These men had been fighting in 100 degrees with no clean water; they said that while the injured were lying on the beach, waiting to be collected, they would go across to the water pipes from the ships and pierce them with their knives just to get a drop. These stories sobered us up a bit.

Forced march

One day the Scottish Horse called for some piping, so myself and another went on deck and played a few jigs and reels to cheer everyone up. It clearly didn’t get everyone’s approval – one English officer told us to shut up or he’d put us in chains!

From there we travelled to Alexandria in Egypt where we stayed for a week. This included a forced march for a day and a night to ‘give the boys some exercise’. We had some shore leave, and Sandy, myself and three others from our platoon found some bars and a nightclub to enjoy.

It was bewildering and exciting for me. There were men from all over the world – in turbans and Aussie hats, Foreign Office men in crisp white shorts, Africans and Indians, officers and privates – jostling at the bar, with the good-natured shrieks and shouts of soldiers on a night out.

Voluptuous women would sit on our knee, encouraging us to smoke a hookah and buy them a drink, only to float off the minute they had it in their hand. We would dance until long after daybreak and then stagger back to our lines, giggling at everything and anything.

Thinking about Louise drowns out the pain. All my contact with her is soothing, caring, considerate. I wonder what she thinks of me