by Jess Smith
Roast pigeon, gulped down with ruby red wine, was on the menu that night, but it had a high price!
It wasn’t either man’s style to finish a whole bottle, but ‘when wine’s in, wit’s oot’, as they say in temperance circles. Ballads soon came loud and tuneful from behind the pigeon cart—so loud a certain captain had to investigate. Downing two bottles of local plonk wasn’t a shooting offence, but consuming His Majesty’s birds—that did indeed merit a death penalty! If Sandy had had just one ounce of sense he would not have offered Rokeby the birds’ feathers for a softer pillow, but therein lay more than enough evidence to convict them.
‘Shot at dawn!’ screamed a red-faced, foaming-mouthed Captain. ‘No trial.’
Handcuffed and still singing, the criminals were marched off, still oblivious of their impending doom.
Next morning, with a watery sun to their back and an angry Rokeby to their front, both soberly admitted the offence, but never for a second did they imagine that the Captain would have the execution carried out.
He first subjected them to a tirade about how crucial carrier pigeons were for communicating army intelligence; without these worthy birds, messages of strategic importance would be lost, and everything depended on keeping abreast of the movements of the enemy. Sandy, in their defence, assured the captain that those birds, the ones they had roasted, were injured and useless, unable to perform their duties.
This provoked another tirade of curses from Rokeby. He hit a wooden table so hard a notepad shot into the air, along with a nib pen and a pot of ink. Bruar glanced at Sandy, who had turned deathly pale, and whispered, ‘Shit, we’ve had it, this idiot’s lost his marbles.’
Twelve soldiers lined up, guns stiff at their sides. Rokeby unholstered a service revolver, straightened his peaked cap, and clicked the heels of his high boots. He seemed to enjoy the whole situation, lording himself above lesser mortals once again. But one young soldier, who’d been chosen for the firing squad, had seen his own companions die once too often. He took a brave step and laid down his rifle, refusing to take part. Rokeby threw him aside, aiming a hard kick into the soldier’s back, who scrambled for cover. Rokeby was mad!
Fear gripped the platoon, and another brave lad broke ranks and went to find Taylor who was overseeing the arrival of the long-awaited supply convoy. In the nick of time the Sergeant Major came up to the command post. The order to fire was about to be given.
‘Stop, ya bloody fools!’
Rokeby spat fire at Taylor, who in turn raged. Everyone listened to see what the outcome of their argument would be—none more so than two blindfolded, hand-tied Scotsmen.
‘What the hell are you playing at? Taylor screamed. ‘Every bloody available man is needed to fight an increasing enemy, and what are you doing? I’ll tell you, will I? You’re doing a fine job for them—shooting your own bloody soldiers. Has old Kaiser promised you a medal, eh, Rokeby? Rokeby stood stiffly, removed his cap and threw it at Taylor. ‘They killed and ate the King’s carrier pigeons.’ His tone of voice lowered as he added threateningly, ‘I am your superior officer. You will face a court-martial. Make no mistake, you’re for the chop. The next bullet is for you!’
Taylor had taken enough from this cold-blooded man. ‘I’ll kick your superior arse, you little needle-faced shit, and if I so much as see a firing squad again I’ll shoot you myself.’
Rokeby coolly touched his holstered handgun and sneered, ‘For that outburst of insubordination, I’ll have you, boy.’
Taylor had said his piece and would have walked away, but he couldn’t help one last jab. ‘Listen mate, when this war is over you can do what you want, but while we face a mighty enemy, it’s them or us, and if the King is insulted by the loss of measly fist-sized pigeons helping to feed his own soldiers, then I’ll personally apologise to him myself.’
Sergeant Major Taylor grabbed a rifle, stepped closer until they stood nose to nose, and said, ‘You’re a disgrace to that uniform. If I so much as hear your weedy voice barking orders at my men, I’ll stick this bayonet as far up your bloody arse as it’ll go, and spit roast you for the crows. Now, let’s get on with the war.’
Captain Rokeby could see in the faces of his men how little regard they had for him. To save face he ordered the condemned men to be freed and walked off into his tent, cap pushed under a stiff arm.
From then on, a pair of very sober Highlanders were determined to keep eyes firmly in the back of their heads where Captain Rokeby was concerned.
Fate, that invisible stalker, has its own way of watching and waiting however. Before a week was out an enemy shell exploded, obliterating a single vehicle. This car had been ferrying the captain to a meeting with his superiors, who no doubt would have been informed of Taylor’s interference with the execution and insults to his Majesty.
The bond between Sandy and Bruar grew stronger after the ‘pigeon’ incident and secured their friendship. As one month followed close behind another, they protected and watched out for each other like brothers.
Sergeant Major Taylor continued to lead a fine body of men, taking out the enemy when opportunities arose. Their war was a matter of brutal man-to-man combat, spying behind enemy lines, and charging blindly through fire and choking smoke following orders regardless. It was a far cry from Bruar’s misty hill-roads of home.
It is only right to mention other duties which immersed them in the horrors of war. There was usually a mess to be cleared before they moved on. What one minute before had been healthy specimens of manhood had become mangled corpses to be used as ramps for the advance of an ever increasing column of lorries and black-booted feet.
There were a variety of dead. Some shot cleanly, others crushed and twisted, some blown to smithereens. Fire turned flesh to cinders and left half burnt lumps of singed bodies. Gas tormented the lucky ones who survived with breathing problems and blistered faces. Unlucky lads lay screaming as their guts protruded through bloodied fingers.
Emotion is a luxury in hell. Men who in civilian life had never so much as cut a finger had to remove dead companions from muddy shell-holes, never knowing if the next flames of death would land in their own shelter.
Sometime later the battle-hardened troops were lined up on shore, waiting to embark on the Royal Navy battleship Inflexible. The war had taken a new twist. Turkey had thrown her weight on the side of Germany. The battlefield had opened a new front—Gallipoli.
18 March 1915 saw Sandy and Bruar on deck, wondering if their luck would hold. Bruar’s heart ached for Megan. He’d never been on leave, but according to Taylor it wouldn’t be long before everyone was heading home, the war triumphantly over.
Sandy, who had recently abandoned pigeons in favour of Belgian gundogs which were trained to transport small cannons, asked when.
‘This next one will be the big change, like nothing we’ve seen before. This is bloody big! I’d be shitting myself if I was the Kaiser. The whole bloody world has turned against him and this tin-pot Turk. I bloody bet you this battle will be the last. Aussie, French, Indians, Yanks, no one could beat a force like that.’
All the soldiers tight-packed on the ship, sickened by war and desperate to see their families, lifted their arms in the air and in unison shouted, ‘Hip, hip, bloody hip, hooray then, SM.’
Everyone, that is, except Bruar. He felt an air of foreboding, one he could not shake off, and the further up the Dardanelles Straits the boat steered, the more it took hold.
Sandy had been watching dolphins racing between the ships as they sailed along the narrow stretch of water separating Asia from Europe, and asked, ‘What ails you, man?’
Bruar pulled a torn wallet from his tunic and handed him a photo, saying, ‘I’m not going to make it. Tell her I fought well and I release her from the promise.’
Sandy slipped the picture into his wallet, muttering about how tinkers are stupid and full of superstition. As Bruar turned his face skywards, an albatross glided on powerful wings to soar high above the ship, and in
that same moment a thundering thud vibrated through the hull. They’d struck a minefield. Flashes of blinding light followed, and yet another boom from below. The vessel filled with dense smoke, flames shot in every direction, screaming men darted through them like headless chickens. Sandy frantically called out Bruar’s name, but at the spot where his friend had stood, a gaping hole spewed torrents of water. From then it was every man for himself.
Exposed to the heat, Sandy covered his head with his tunic and ran up the ship, searching desperately for his mate, but in such a commotion it was useless.
Lifeboats fell like stones from the deck moorings and splashed into the agitated water. Sandy caught a glimpse of SM Taylor. ‘He’s taken it, sarge—he was portside when the bomb hit, he’s gone!’
‘Look, man, you’ve seen enough to know the score now. Get to bloody hell off this sinking coffin, or you’ll be with him.’
‘Every man must live,’ Sandy thought, landing in the froth. Sizzling foam and debris slammed into his face. Pushing his way through the chaos, feeling like a wee fish in a giant net, with the screams of drowning men around him, he offered hasty prayers that his life should not be tragically cut short, like Bruar’s.
As he dragged himself onto a driftwood log that had caught against a rotted fishing boat, he felt sand under his feet and silently gave thanks; he’d live another day!
‘No time to sit,’ he thought, surveying a tidal line of carnage. So many needed help, and maybe, just maybe, his friend was among them. And to add violence to the enemy fire that lit up the sky, Mother Nature threw in her own show; a thunderstorm, so ferocious it turned injured men, who lay in grotesque shapes along the shore, into figures of mud.
The sky forked jagged blue, earth-shattering thunder joined the chorus of enemy bombardment that rained onto allied ships, sending them in every direction; it was the Devil’s Guy Fawkes bonfire of destruction.
Shell-holes crammed with broken men crying for help cut to his heart and began to grate on his nerves; he curled under the upturned fishing boat, closed his eyes, covered his ears and slept.
Time elapsed, he’d no idea how long, but gradually, slowly, the enemy fire subsided as the allied battleships built up into a massive force in the narrow strait of water. The storm had rolled southwards; an eerie silence prevailed as a smir of rain fell.
Up and down the shoreline medics scurried, shouting ‘He needs assistance’ or ‘He’s finished.’
Sandy crawled from his shelter among the din and was wondering what SM Taylor might say about it all, when suddenly there was a voice nearby. ‘To think bloody Greek gods lived and fought in these parts—Helen of bloody Troy swam in this damn sea. We should be bloody honoured to stand upright on this famed shore. Have I any bloody troops left, by the way?’
‘Over here Sarge, I thought you’d bought it. Good to hear you in your usual fine fettle.’ He scrambled onto rubbery legs and weakly saluted.
‘Stand at ease, you daft bugger, I’ve seen sturdier legs on a jelly fish. Stewart took it didn’t he?’
‘I can’t say. One minute he was handing me a wedding picture, the next he was gone...’ The photo flashed to mind; quickly he retrieved it from his sodden tunic. The swim had obliterated Bruar’s smiling face, but Megan’s features were still clear. Carefully he flicked the sand off it and put it back. ‘I wonder how she’ll take the news. All he ever spoke about, apart from this blasted war, was his Megan.’
‘We all have our families. Never mind that, the injured need help.’
Sandy touched Taylor’s arm and said, ‘Sarge, that’s the first time I heard you say a sentence without that word.’
‘What word?’
‘Bloody.’
‘Just saying it as I see it, man, as I bloody see it.’
The sun had dropped below a pink horizon as they pulled the last man free of the water line. Capes lay draped over the dead as the injured were stretchered off to waiting ambulances. Seagulls screeched and squawked high above them, diving at the severed limbs and broken bodies still scattered throughout the tide-line. One swooped down, Sandy threw some sand at it, then saw something moving in the water. ‘Sergeant, there’s a man, we missed one.’ Both pulled the body free of the water, turning him on his back to look for signs of life.
‘He’s alive!’ Taylor ripped at the soaked tunic and rubbed the exposed chest. The man groaned and they both shouted for a medic. Sandy moved closer to get a better look. Night was closing fast, but that face, that body, had a familiar look—it was Bruar, barely alive! ‘Thank God, he’s made it, Sarge! My mate’s all right.’
‘No man, he’s not,’ said a naval doctor, taking control. ‘He’s got a beating heart, but look at his face!’
Taylor recognised the muddy face, with motionless eyes staring from porcelain sockets, as belonging to Bruar, but it was not the young Highlander both men knew.
‘Stretcher-bearers, shell-shock, over here, quick!’ The doctor then spoke quietly to Sandy. ‘The war for this lad is well and truly over.’ He refused to accept what he was told, and said, ‘He’s built like an ox, this is nothing to him. He’s tinker-bred, lives in the wilds.’
Two men, naked to the waist and covered in dried blood, rolled Bruar onto the stretcher and rushed him off to wait for an ambulance.
‘Doctor, save his life, I’ve never known such a decent bloke,’ Sandy pleaded.
‘Listen, I can sew wounds and amputate limbs, but I can’t treat what that soldier suffers from. It’s enough to say that those corpses spread along the shore are the lucky ones. That sad bastard still breathes, but for the rest of his life won’t know a thing about it. Come now man, surely you’ve seen all this before!’
Sandy clenched his fists, looked at his mate lying among the chaos of the scene and promised, ‘As God’s my witness I’ll get through this and come back to find you at the end of it. If I don’t, I’ll search for Megan and tell her how much of a hero you were.’
From the back of a trundling lorry he watched the shoreline fade from view. Sore, stiff and lonely, he gave little thought to tomorrow, it was just another day, another battle. But for the half-bred tinker who had shared his war, the battle had finished.
EIGHT
Spring came, and with it every day saw Megan climb up on the high hills, trying vainly to blot the lack of Bruar from her mind. Doctor Mackenzie failed to bring any letters. Instead there was only the news of yet more and more battles, with the inevitable destruction left in their wake.
Her campsite companions continued to spend the nights with loose women—females, she had decided, who could only be lonely and weak.
‘You won’t catch me giving myself to men,’ she sternly told her father-in-law one morning, slapping steaming hot porridge into a bowl held between shaking hands. ‘When your son comes home, and mark my words, he will any day now, he’ll find the same clean wife waiting just as he left her.’
‘Lassie, I am sick and tired of you going on about me and O’Connor with the plough wives. Now shut up and fetch me a bucket so I can wash.’
‘Fetch your own bucket, you filthy excuse for a man!’
Big Rory stood up and shook his head. She almost felt sorry for him, as he said, ‘I never thought the day would arrive when a good-daughter spoke in those tones to her man’s father.’
‘Well, good-father, perhaps if you hadn’t been such a fornicator and drunkard...’
He lifted a hand to strike. ‘I’m fond of a skirt, aye, but I’m no drunk!’
‘No drunk? Why the hell are your hands shaking so violently? Look at them, you’re spilling the porridge all over yourself like a half-dead old man.’
‘Megan, please take your impudent face up the hillside and chant to the bloody eagle. I’m sure he must have some other omen to share with you.’
Megan glared daggers at him through pools of tears.
He knew how important the ancient ways were to her, so that his tone and choice of insult hit a raw nerve. He breathed a sigh of relief at he
aring Mackenzie’s horse trotting along the road. If the doctor saw his shaking hands, his lectures would be stern, so he quickly scraped the porridge into the fire, clasped his hands behind his back and smiled broadly.
‘Come on, lassie, clean your face, get the kettle boiled, here’s the doctor. Maybe there will be news from Bruar,’ he said, gingerly touching her arm. She raised her eyebrows at the oatmeal sizzling in the fire and thought, ‘What a waste.’ Their argument was forgotten, though, and she ran to welcome the only link they had to news about the war.
‘You haven’t the buggy with you today, doctor, is a wheel broke?’
‘Er, no, lass, it’s just that my old mare hasn’t been lasting the pull these days.’
Something about his tone seemed uneasy, he didn’t hold out a hand with letters or anything else. He tried to avoid her stare as she searched his face for news.
Big Rory had seen that look before—the old Seer had it when he said his lassie wouldn’t see a dawn! Megan was pulling at the doctor’s coat. ‘Still no news?’
Rory stepped forward and dropped a bombshell, ‘When?’
‘What do you mean, when?’ Panic swelled in her breast like a giant wave crashing upon a wild beach. It swallowed her whole body and dashed it to pieces. In her head were visions of bullets ripping through her husband; of him chased by demons with no faces, plunging bayonets up and down his body, the horrors were out of control. ‘What do you mean—answer me, damn you!’ She bolted at her father-in-law, pulling at his limp arm. Instinctively he held her close. But she needed answers.
Breaking away she grabbed at the doctor and begged him to tell her.
‘I’m sorry that it had to be me, but who else knows the heart of you? Forgive me, Megan, for this is a bad day.’
‘No! No! I don’t want this news.’ She slipped to the ground, shaking.
O’Connor emerged from his tent and draped a shawl around her shoulders. He shook his head at the news bringer, who had hardly taken the time to alight from his horse before the blow of his message had struck the threesome.
