Ardnish Was Home Episode 8

In Egypt we had unloaded our ponies, shaggy Highland beasts more used to the cold moorland of Wester Ross than the dry heat of an Egyptian summer. When we signed up for the regiment, we were paid more if we bought our own mounts with us – many of them had been carrying the Scouts’ children on their backs just a few months before.

Now loaded onto two smaller ships, the SS Sarnia and SS Abasseieh, we set off again and, after a brief stop on the Greek island of Lemnos, we finally arrived off Gallipoli on September 26.

The sight as we arrived was extraordinary: Dozens of ships were at anchor. The hospital ships, the Gloucester Castle and the Essequibo, were lit up with bulbs and had red crosses painted on their sides.

Our battleships were pounding the hills, and little boats were scurrying back and forth, taking ammunition and food onto the beach and returning with injured men.

We were moored opposite Suvla Bay, the northerly point of the invasion. The Australians and New Zealanders were at the southerly tip 15 miles away, with other troops spread in between.

Most of our boys stood watching on the deck as we steamed in, a knot of fear in even the bravest man’s stomach.

We sat at anchor for half a day, waiting for the order to disembark, and as darkness fell we were loaded into covered boats called ‘beetles’ to take us onshore.

The beetles were new. When the landings first took place months ago, the men sat exposed in open lighters, offering the Turks the opportunity to direct their fire straight into the boats as they landed on the beach.

In many cases, not a single man made it onto the sand alive, and the boats would float back and forth full of rotting corpses in the heat of the summer.

Excitement

There is some excitement in the tent. A hospital ship has returned from Malta and casualties are being chosen to go out to it. The most seriously injured take priority.

Louise comes along. “We’re putting some injured on the ship, DP, but I’m afraid it won’t include you. I’m so sorry.”

An officer is directing stretcher bearers.

“Take him . . .and him. Be careful with him. He’s got a broken back.” Within a day, the tent is full again.

Blushed

The first week after we landed, we were on fatigues, taking water bowsers up to the front, putting up tents, carrying stores and so on. There was one huge advantage: we could swim in the sea.

Everyone did and without a stitch of clothing.

One sharp-witted lad shouted: “Sir, if we get a mirror, we can reflect the glare off Gillies and blind the Turks!”

True enough, there can be few whiter people than a red-haired Highland lad on his first trip to a foreign country. I blushed, only adding to the effect.

Colonel Willie Macdonald was our Commanding Officer, and I was his batman and piper. He set up a crack company of snipers to which I was seconded.

Familiar

Ever since I’d signed up I’d noticed that the other regiments think us odd, travelling as we do on Highland ponies, telescopes around our shoulders.

And there’s the curious, familiar relationship between us and our officers, which is in stark contrast to the extremely formal relationship of the officers and guardsmen of the English regiments.

Like the rest of our officers, Colonel Willie is one of the lairds, and is the owner of the Long John whisky distilleries in Fort William. He and I get along famously, and he is always keen to know how my father is faring.

Although I spent almost two years with old Tearlach Maclean on Canna distilling illegal whisky I never told the Colonel about it, but he knows I know a lot about whisky.

He was at Peanmeanach when I got back from Canna a year or more ago; there for some fishing with his brother. He’d arrived while my father and I were out, and was having tea with my mother.

The table was covered in drawings of a spirit receiver that Tearlach was keen to have. He raised his eyebrow at me when I came in and scrambled to collect the papers together, blushing the same red as my hair.

Us snipers would, on occasion, lie in some scrub for days on end, often within yards of the enemy, waiting to get a shot at an important officer.

Being stalkers, which most of the Scouts were, we had a real familiarity with a rifle and a 250-yard shot was quite feasible, as my friend Sandy was to demonstrate before too long.

From early October the regiment was moved into the forward trenches. The men we replaced looked haggard and exhausted. Many were wounded.

Despite this, there was a bit of banter and some helpful words as we moved into their positions: “Don’t put your head past here, and don’t go further along than that bush . . .”

Good advice

They were full of good advice. In the three weeks that they had been here there had been a major push by our troops to take the hilltops, yet despite huge losses on each side, not an inch of ground had been gained and the men were in a desperate state.

Within a week we, too, were in a similarly bad way. The rotten food, the water (when there was any) that tasted of decaying meat, and the relentless spells of heavy freezing rain all took their toll.

Bodies were everywhere: our own and the Turks. Many were just out of reach, and an attempt to reach them and take them off for a burial would result in a shot being fired. It was just far too dangerous.

There had been a couple of armistices over the summer where troops from both sides dug communal pits and exchanged cigarettes with the enemy.

The Turks often burned their dead, causing an even worse stench and making us retch for days.

In one trench, a hand stuck out of the bank and men shook it as they passed by. I couldn’t even look at it.

Louise comes along. “We’re putting some injured on the ship, DP,” she says, “but I’m afraid it won’t include you

More tomorrow.

Ardnish Was Home is published by Birlinn. The third novel in the series, Ardnish, was published in 2020. www. birlinn.co.uk