The serial: Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day63

The fall of France caused consternation among officers in 2nd Argylls whose brothers were caught up in the debacle

Surprisingly, these moves did not badly affect the battalion’s esprit de corps. But the Argylls had built up a proud image.

“I cannot believe I shall ever enjoy anything so much again,” wrote Hector Greenfield to the then Brigadier Edward L. Spears early in February, 11 days before he departed Singapore and the battalion.

“One of the attractions is the feeling that you are your own master, within reason, and another the charm of being among your oldest friends.

“I have been lucky to have it (command of the 2nd Argylls) for as long as two years in these days of rapid change.”

Plenty of changes came during this period of relative calm: the phoney war lasted from September 1939 until May 1940. Unlike Europe and the UK, life in Singapore continued as usual with no blackouts or rationing.

The government and the press tried to lull the population into a sense of security. After all, this was Fortress Singapore, but the army was under no illusion as to the island’s safety. Incoming soldiers were regarded with irritation by civilians who felt overwhelmed by servicemen in their streets.

Out of touch

Some expatriates felt guilty that Singapore was so unaffected, while others in the army felt especially cut off as home leave was forbidden in wartime.

“We are so far out of the world here,” wrote Hector Greenfield in a letter to Spears’ wife in November 1939, “that we have almost ceased to realise we are out of touch”.

Angus Rose hoped that when his course at the Staff College, Quetta, ended he would be sent to the Middle East or back to the UK.

Greenfield himself was relieved to get “something more active as this is a complete backwater,” and Angus “sincerely hoped” he would not be in Singapore very much longer.

Nevertheless, Stewart continued to keep his battalion fit for war with route marches and jungle training. Throughout this time, drafts of men and officers sailed from Scotland to arrive many weeks later in Singapore.

As adjutant, Angus welcomed Kenneth McLeod to the Tyersall mess. “We were all very pally,” McLeod recalls, and he found Angus “a very good chap”.

In May 1940, disaster hit Europe. Hitler invaded the Low Countries and France, routing Allied units including the British Expeditionary Force, before being evacuated from Dunkirk.

The fall of France caused consternation among officers in 2nd Argylls whose brothers were caught up in the debacle.

Rose’s eldest brother, Rhoddy, adjutant of 1st Highland Light Infantry, was fighting in France, while the youngest, Neil in the French Foreign Legion, was missing.

Cables tumbled in not only for Rose, whose anxiety was allayed, but also for Angus, as Jock, a captain in the Argylls’ 8th Battalion, was also serving in France.

On April 16 Jock’s battalion was sent to Metz in north-east France to help the French defend the Maginot Line. By May 23 the situation became critical when the German forces reached the Channel.

The Division moved west to support the French on the Somme at St Valery.

As soon as Jock’s battalion reached its destination close to the River Bresle, which runs parallel and a little south of the Somme, Jock and his men blocked the roads with farm carts and tree trunks and relieved a French armoured car regiment already in contact with the enemy at Sallenelle.

Booby traps

Before the regiment left the area, a French officer showed Jock the neighbouring wood which, he warned, was laid with German booby traps, set off by a wire as soon as pressure was put on them.

On June 3, when a German patrol arrived in the west part of the wood, Jock and his men set off towards the enemy to try to cut off their retreat.

As he approached the wood’s perimeter where a path ran into a field, he heard a deafening report and looked down.

Seeing that his left leg was badly damaged, he staggered back to his party of men and lay down. The leg was broken above the ankle and he had a wound close to his knee but it only caused pain when he moved. He lay there for two hours until a stretcher arrived. At a nearby farm they found a truck which drove him to Sallenelle where he was laid on the ground and given a bottle of champagne to drink but, because he was shivering violently, he was unable to.

Orderlies in a local school gave him chloroform and dressed his leg, before he was conducted to the advanced dressing station seven miles away.

By now it was dark and, because they were without headlights, which were forbidden, the driver was unable to find his way.

Jock advised him to stop the vehicle so that he could study the signposts properly by the side of the road. When this measure was unsuccessful, Jock grabbed the man’s map and found out, in the nick of time, that they were heading for Abbeville, which by that time was occupied by the Germans.

The following day they arrived at the casualty clearing station at Rouen.

Jock suffered from a long, uncomfortable journey in an ambulance but was moved to a hospital train where doctors operated on his leg, sending word to the driver not to brake too suddenly.

Leg off?

Finally at a hospital in Le Mans, he was put in a ward with four other officers, and that evening, before he performed the operation, the young surgeon, Jack, warned him that “he might have to have his leg off”.

At this point, he kept it. “I was relieved to wake up and find I still had two legs,” he wrote.

Jock stayed in the hospital for a week then moved to La Baule on the mouth of the Loire. Two days later at St Nazaire, he boarded a hospital ship, the Dorsetshire, which arrived at Southampton on June 25.

His destination was the Royal Victoria Military Hospital at Netley.

The vast building, a quarter of a mile long, accommodated 138 wards and 1,000 beds and was constructed at Victoria’s behest after the Crimean War. Soon after his arrival, Jock returned to the operating theatre and this time his leg was amputated. For several days afterwards, the doctors were unsure if Jock would survive the operation.

More tomorrow