DONNIE MACKENZIE 1920-2007

Donnie wrote this account in 1982 and the words transcribed here are his own.

In a few places it was thought helpful to add a note on such points as distance from one place to another where this was relevant to the story. Military abbreviations have generally been spelled out in full at the first time of use but other military terms including war-time usage have been left as Donnie wrote them. They add to the colour of the story. Minor amendments have been made to the otherwise high standard of punctuation, to make it easier to read, by inserting paragraphs or reducing the length of particularly long sentences. In two or three instances short passages have been relocated to keep to the natural chronology of the story. Headings have been added at the start of each natural break in the account. Any additions to Donnie’s writing are given in square brackets and consist largely of points of confirmation or clarity with reference to either Melville or Sgroggie – see the bibliography)

A small number of minor alterations and addition have been made covering names of places or people. These include place names which Donnie sometimes gave in Gaelic or in anglicized Gaelic – sometimes swapping between the two. These have been standardized to Gaelic unless the English name is better known. There are variations in the spelling of Italian and Faroe place names and these have been standardized to conform to the gazetteer in the Times Comprehensive World Atlas of the World (2005) . There are also variations in the way Donnie recorded people’s names – particularly in the use of nicknames or places were the individual came from or estates that they might have worked at. These personal names have been amended so that the nickname comes between the first name and surname (e.g Donald Piggie MacDonald) and the place name or occupation immediately after the surname (e.g. John MacIssac Benbecula or Donald MacBean, company clerk).

Donnie from time to time repeated short descriptions and several of these have been deleted. The references (p1, p2 etc) are to the page numbers of the original hand-written manuscript. Otherwise the story is that of Donnie himself, in his own words.

George Hendry, Balnacra 2007

(p1) Earliest childhood – Killilan, Kintail

I was born on the 1st April 1920 in a place called Coire Domhainn about five miles up the river Ling from Killilan. When it was obvious to my mother that I would not be too long in making an entry into the world, she sent my father to fetch the doctor. He had to walk five miles to Killilan where he got a bicycle and cycled the rest of the way to Balmacara [about 11 miles] to the doctor’s house and got the doctor out of his bed. They then cycled back to Killilan and walked up the footpath back to Coire Domhainn; by this time it was well past daylight and I was sleeping in or squawking in the bed. I don’t have any memories or recollections of the next couple of years while we lived there. When I was about three years old we moved up to Duileich which is another glen up from Killilan [Glen Elchaig] and about one mile from the Iron Lodge from where footpaths go to Glen Affric, Monar and Maol Buidhe. There was a keepers house about one mile on either side of us, one at Carnach and one at the Iron Lodge; also a shepherd’s house across the river from Carnach which was occupied by John Cameron, his wife and family, three sons and four daughters. The Carnach house was occupied by a stalker John Findlayson and his wife.

The Lodge was the home of another stalker Alick Ali Dubh MacKenzie, his wife, two sons and two daughters. One of my first memories is of walking along to their house which was about a mile away and seeing one of the ladies using a hand-turned whisk to mix the eggs etc as she was baking. Not having seen one of them being used before, I was greatly taken with the whisk, so much so, that when I left I had in my proud possession an old whisk which she gave me all for myself. On reaching home, accompanied as always by (p2) Queenie, my father’s liver and white spaniel. The first place I went to was the hen house, broke all the eggs in a dusting hole which the hens had made in the dry ground, and whisked them all and Queenie had her fill. Later on when my mother went to collect the eggs, she found none but on seeing the whisk lying by the hole, and all the broken egg shells, she soon realized the score and I was sharply scolded. On another occasion I threw a stone and broke a window frame in the west top bedroom, went in and reported it to my parents who were setting the table about to have their dinner. My father told me to go out and get a switch of wood which he was going to give me stokes across my bum. I went out and looked around, found a fence post which I dragged into the kitchen. When my parents saw it they burst into laughter and best of all I was not spanked!

On the rare occasions my parents left the glen, by horse and trap, to visit my uncle (my father’s brother) in Dornie [14 miles] , or to go to Kyle [20 miles] to the shops, I was left with the Cameron family, across the river from Carnach over the swing bridge. The younger brother Jackie, several years my senior used to go down to the sand at the end of the loch and we played at trains with a metal wire winder found on the fence strainers, This, tied by string and pulled through the sand, left a nice track and we used to spend hours there. Jackie was very adventurous and one day he dragged his mother’s wash tub, which was a wooden barrel cut in half, and dragged it down to the loch. With the aid of a short piece of wood he managed to get our warship afloat. We were floating and spinning around some distance from the shore when there was a yell and his father with his long beard bristling with rage, appeared out of nowhere. Jack promptly baled out and took to the hill for an hour or so. On another occasion when I was with the Camerons, Jack was sent to clean out the byre in which there was a plentiful supply of goat dung, accumulated during the winter months. After some time when the novelty of filling and emptying the barrow wore off, Jackie got a long piece of rope. Slung it over a rafter and made a swing of it. Proudly he had (p3) a couple of swings on it, saw me looking dolefully up at him, and took me on his lap. We were going great guns back and fore and were in really full swing when the rope snapped. We sailed several feet through the air and yes, landed plum centre into the full barrow of dung. On going into the house after taking the most of the muck off our bodies, hair, hands and feet, in the barn, I’m sure Jackie was skelped in another room. I could hear the hand slaps on some fleshy part of his body while I was stripped by the fire and cleaned with hot water, soft soap and a scrubbing brush - gad it was rough! [Donnie has a margin note – ‘Jack on stilts and fell in river’].The final episode I can remember about Jack was when he took me along to the Iron Lodge to the Ali Dubhs one day on the carrier of an old bicycle he had acquired. The road was very rough and gravelly in places and on the way back home, slightly down hill in one place, Jackie put pressure on the pedals and we were going a fair pace, when he skidded in the lose gravel and down we went. I can still almost feel my head sore when I touch the spot where I had a lump as big an as egg!. The Ali boys, Richard and Sandy, John, Jack Cameron and my dad used to hit a shinty ball around the field below the Duileich house as my father was the Kintail goal keeper at that time. A small club was cut from the branch of a tree and shaped for me and I can still see that black and very hard ball flying through th air and lying on the ground. I found it very hard even to move it when in the long grass, far less hit it any distance. One afternoon my younger sister and I were in the peat shed amusing ourselves with a hen that was evading us and eventually took to the rafters out of reach of our hands. When we gave up and were going in the gate at the end of the house, there standing against the gate was a brand new man-sized, shinty club. I grabbed it and ran into the house shouting’ Mammy, Mammy, look what I found at the gate’. My hopes of a new club, and maybe a place in the team at 5-6 years old, were shattered when I saw Kenny Stalker MacKay from Patt sitting at the table having (p4) walked over the footpath from Patt [ about 10 miles] to play for Kintail at Auchtertyre [a further 16 miles] the next day. On one occasion when his future wife walked up from Duleich to Patt and she left her motor bike in my father’s byre, I went to have a look at it and finished up by managing to pull it off it’s stand and on top of me. Luckily my father was at hand. Once again he was at hand and missed me from sight as he was scything hay in the field and I had lain down on a steep bank to get a drink out of a deep pool and promptly slid on my belly into the pool.

There was packman, Jimmy Wylde, who used to come in summer to give a hand at the hay. He slept in the loft above the barn, byre and stable and was if possible not an early riser. On this occasion my father had been down and given Jimmy a shout but when he hadn’t come for his breakfast some time later, I was told by my father ‘go down a see what the hell is keeping Jimmy’. I ran down, stood in front of the granary door and yelled up ‘ your breakfast is ready , what the hell is keeping you?’ at the top of my voice. No sooner were the words out of my young mouth than the granary door was flung open and this thin legged figure in his shirt tails was dancing and waving his arms in the air and shouting down at me not to be using words like that. Needless to say from then on I was his caller and never had to use those words again!.

My mother was a great believer in giving us medicine periodically, we got malt and cod-liver oil in winter, when it was available we got Boots emulsion or Virol: but when we got a spoonful of castor oil or syrup of figs, we got a spoonful of jam, rhubarb or blackcurrant in particular, shoved down our throat, how I hated that and to this day can’t touch the chases of jam I got after the laxative.

My parents always spoke in Gaelic and spoke to me in English. One day when I was due the dreaded dose, my mother cornered me in the bathroom with the castor oil in the spoon she tried to coax me to ‘take it like a man’ but I resisted, so eventually a she gripped my nose and forced the dreaded stuff into my mouth quickly followed by the jam. I a managed to get one Gaelic expression (p5) out ‘nighean an diabail’ which means daughter of the devil. No sooner were these words out than I was upended and soundly thrashed on my bottom.

DONNIE MACKENZIE 1920-2007

Donnie wrote this account in 1982 and the words transcribed here are his own.

In a few places it was thought helpful to add a note on such points as distance from one place to another where this was relevant to the story. Military abbreviations have generally been spelled out in full at the first time of use but other military terms including war-time usage have been left as Donnie wrote them. They add to the colour of the story. Minor amendments have been made to the otherwise high standard of punctuation, to make it easier to read, by inserting paragraphs or reducing the length of particularly long sentences. In two or three instances short passages have been relocated to keep to the natural chronology of the story. Headings have been added at the start of each natural break in the account. Any additions to Donnie’s writing are given in square brackets and consist largely of points of confirmation or clarity with reference to either Melville or Sgroggie – see the bibliography)

A small number of minor alterations and addition have been made covering names of places or people. These include place names which Donnie sometimes gave in Gaelic or in anglicized Gaelic – sometimes swapping between the two. These have been standardized to Gaelic unless the English name is better known. There are variations in the spelling of Italian and Faroe place names and these have been standardized to conform to the gazetteer in the Times Comprehensive World Atlas of the World (2005) . There are also variations in the way Donnie recorded people’s names – particularly in the use of nicknames or places were the individual came from or estates that they might have worked at. These personal names have been amended so that the nickname comes between the first name and surname (e.g Donald Piggie MacDonald) and the place name or occupation immediately after the surname (e.g. John MacIssac Benbecula or Donald MacBean, company clerk).

Donnie from time to time repeated short descriptions and several of these have been deleted. The references (p1, p2 etc) are to the page numbers of the original hand-written manuscript. Otherwise the story is that of Donnie himself, in his own words.

George Hendry, Balnacra 2007

(p1) Earliest childhood – Killilan, Kintail

I was born on the 1st April 1920 in a place called Coire Domhainn about five miles up the river Ling from Killilan. When it was obvious to my mother that I would not be too long in making an entry into the world, she sent my father to fetch the doctor. He had to walk five miles to Killilan where he got a bicycle and cycled the rest of the way to Balmacara [about 11 miles] to the doctor’s house and got the doctor out of his bed. They then cycled back to Killilan and walked up the footpath back to Coire Domhainn; by this time it was well past daylight and I was sleeping in or squawking in the bed. I don’t have any memories or recollections of the next couple of years while we lived there. When I was about three years old we moved up to Duileich which is another glen up from Killilan [Glen Elchaig] and about one mile from the Iron Lodge from where footpaths go to Glen Affric, Monar and Maol Buidhe. There was a keepers house about one mile on either side of us, one at Carnach and one at the Iron Lodge; also a shepherd’s house across the river from Carnach which was occupied by John Cameron, his wife and family, three sons and four daughters. The Carnach house was occupied by a stalker John Findlayson and his wife.

The Lodge was the home of another stalker Alick Ali Dubh MacKenzie, his wife, two sons and two daughters. One of my first memories is of walking along to their house which was about a mile away and seeing one of the ladies using a hand-turned whisk to mix the eggs etc as she was baking. Not having seen one of them being used before, I was greatly taken with the whisk, so much so, that when I left I had in my proud possession an old whisk which she gave me all for myself. On reaching home, accompanied as always by (p2) Queenie, my father’s liver and white spaniel. The first place I went to was the hen house, broke all the eggs in a dusting hole which the hens had made in the dry ground, and whisked them all and Queenie had her fill. Later on when my mother went to collect the eggs, she found none but on seeing the whisk lying by the hole, and all the broken egg shells, she soon realized the score and I was sharply scolded. On another occasion I threw a stone and broke a window frame in the west top bedroom, went in and reported it to my parents who were setting the table about to have their dinner. My father told me to go out and get a switch of wood which he was going to give me stokes across my bum. I went out and looked around, found a fence post which I dragged into the kitchen. When my parents saw it they burst into laughter and best of all I was not spanked!

On the rare occasions my parents left the glen, by horse and trap, to visit my uncle (my father’s brother) in Dornie [14 miles] , or to go to Kyle [20 miles] to the shops, I was left with the Cameron family, across the river from Carnach over the swing bridge. The younger brother Jackie, several years my senior used to go down to the sand at the end of the loch and we played at trains with a metal wire winder found on the fence strainers, This, tied by string and pulled through the sand, left a nice track and we used to spend hours there. Jackie was very adventurous and one day he dragged his mother’s wash tub, which was a wooden barrel cut in half, and dragged it down to the loch. With the aid of a short piece of wood he managed to get our warship afloat. We were floating and spinning around some distance from the shore when there was a yell and his father with his long beard bristling with rage, appeared out of nowhere. Jack promptly baled out and took to the hill for an hour or so. On another occasion when I was with the Camerons, Jack was sent to clean out the byre in which there was a plentiful supply of goat dung, accumulated during the winter months. After some time when the novelty of filling and emptying the barrow wore off, Jackie got a long piece of rope. Slung it over a rafter and made a swing of it. Proudly he had (p3) a couple of swings on it, saw me looking dolefully up at him, and took me on his lap. We were going great guns back and fore and were in really full swing when the rope snapped. We sailed several feet through the air and yes, landed plum centre into the full barrow of dung. On going into the house after taking the most of the muck off our bodies, hair, hands and feet, in the barn, I’m sure Jackie was skelped in another room. I could hear the hand slaps on some fleshy part of his body while I was stripped by the fire and cleaned with hot water, soft soap and a scrubbing brush - gad it was rough! [Donnie has a margin note – ‘Jack on stilts and fell in river’].The final episode I can remember about Jack was when he took me along to the Iron Lodge to the Ali Dubhs one day on the carrier of an old bicycle he had acquired. The road was very rough and gravelly in places and on the way back home, slightly down hill in one place, Jackie put pressure on the pedals and we were going a fair pace, when he skidded in the lose gravel and down we went. I can still almost feel my head sore when I touch the spot where I had a lump as big an as egg!. The Ali boys, Richard and Sandy, John, Jack Cameron and my dad used to hit a shinty ball around the field below the Duileich house as my father was the Kintail goal keeper at that time. A small club was cut from the branch of a tree and shaped for me and I can still see that black and very hard ball flying through th air and lying on the ground. I found it very hard even to move it when in the long grass, far less hit it any distance. One afternoon my younger sister and I were in the peat shed amusing ourselves with a hen that was evading us and eventually took to the rafters out of reach of our hands. When we gave up and were going in the gate at the end of the house, there standing against the gate was a brand new man-sized, shinty club. I grabbed it and ran into the house shouting’ Mammy, Mammy, look what I found at the gate’. My hopes of a new club, and maybe a place in the team at 5-6 years old, were shattered when I saw Kenny Stalker MacKay from Patt sitting at the table having (p4) walked over the footpath from Patt [ about 10 miles] to play for Kintail at Auchtertyre [a further 16 miles] the next day. On one occasion when his future wife walked up from Duleich to Patt and she left her motor bike in my father’s byre, I went to have a look at it and finished up by managing to pull it off it’s stand and on top of me. Luckily my father was at hand. Once again he was at hand and missed me from sight as he was scything hay in the field and I had lain down on a steep bank to get a drink out of a deep pool and promptly slid on my belly into the pool.

There was packman, Jimmy Wylde, who used to come in summer to give a hand at the hay. He slept in the loft above the barn, byre and stable and was if possible not an early riser. On this occasion my father had been down and given Jimmy a shout but when he hadn’t come for his breakfast some time later, I was told by my father ‘go down a see what the hell is keeping Jimmy’. I ran down, stood in front of the granary door and yelled up ‘ your breakfast is ready , what the hell is keeping you?’ at the top of my voice. No sooner were the words out of my young mouth than the granary door was flung open and this thin legged figure in his shirt tails was dancing and waving his arms in the air and shouting down at me not to be using words like that. Needless to say from then on I was his caller and never had to use those words again!.

My mother was a great believer in giving us medicine periodically, we got malt and cod-liver oil in winter, when it was available we got Boots emulsion or Virol: but when we got a spoonful of castor oil or syrup of figs, we got a spoonful of jam, rhubarb or blackcurrant in particular, shoved down our throat, how I hated that and to this day can’t touch the chases of jam I got after the laxative. My parents always spoke in Gaelic and spoke to me in English. One day when I was due the dreaded dose, my mother cornered me in the bathroom with the castor oil in the spoon she tried to coax me to ‘take it like a man’ but I resisted, so eventually a she gripped my nose and forced the dreaded stuff into my mouth quickly followed by the jam. I a managed to get one Gaelic expression (p5) out ‘nighean an diabail’ which means daughter of the devil. No sooner were these words out than I was upended and soundly thrashed on my bottom.

Achnashellach, Strathcarron and Balnacra School As there was no school nearer than Killilan my father decided that we would have to move nearer a school, so on the 28th May 1927, I was 7 years old, we moved to Achnashellach [only 12 miles in a direct line but 32 miles by road]. We flitted by Willie Findlay’s lorry. I felt sad leaving Duileich . One bit of the journey I remember well is when coming down the brae into Braeintra in the cab of the furniture lorry, the cockerel in the box with the hens in the back started to crow as loudly as he could. My sister, mother and I went to Achnashellach from Strome Ferry Station [by train] while the lorry went across on the ferry and thence to Achnashellach.

The contrast was great from the treeless and bare Duileich to where the tall trees [at Achnashellach] reached the sky and there were rhododendron bushes everywhere. On exploring the bushes I was thrilled to find rubber and tennis balls everywhere [presumably near the tennis court at Achnashellach Lodge]. Some time was spent exploring, climbing trees and crawling through bushes until I knew every tree and clump of bushes in the proximity of the house. One of the most exciting parts was the fact that the house was only about twenty yards from Achnashellach Station and platform and I was able to see each train as they came in. My mother scolded me as she thought I’d be a nuisance on the platform or fall under a train, so I was banned from going on to the platform. Not to be outdone and miss seeing trains, I soon discovered a route through the bushes, up by the side of a shed between the kennels at the east end of the house and the platform. It was only a matter of seconds from hearing the train when I would be peering over the railings underneath the rail crossing bridge. One day when I bolted to my place a t the railings and as I jumped about four feet onto the foundations of the bridge support I slipped and came down on my head on a nasty sharp stone which put a fair gash in my head. After the train had gone I (p6) came down as I went up and went home with blood pouring down my face. I’m pretty sure when and if I go bald, I’ll have a bit of a scar on my cranium!

In August [1927] I went to school to Balnacra. The first day was a bit strange, but I soon got into the way of things, especially after I cut my way out of a sack into which I was man-handled by the rest of the pupils, all five of them. When they saw the sack being cut open by the screeching little body that had been put into it , they ran of and I was given a fairly wide berth for the rest of that day. Next day all was forgiven and forgotten. I had a two mile walk to and from the school every day. The main road [today the A890] was a gravel road then and there was practically no cars using it, unless owned by the doctor or someone special; therefore there were no lifts to be got. One of the highlights of the year was usually in the first week of May, on the day when the six-day motor cycle rally went from Strathpeffer to Applecross over the very rough, steep and untarred Beallach na Bà. In the morning the first to go by were some of the officials on motor bikes and they always threw books of magazines with each rider’s name, make of bike and rally number to us. We always got out of school in the forenoon while they went west and in the afternoon as they returned.

A couple of years later my sister went to school and later on the three daughters of the station master at Achnashellach. One of the girls from Arinackaig was a real tom-boy and being several years older led us into many escapades and scrapes with our teacher. She took us down to the footbridge which crossed the water between the loch [Loch Dùghail] and the river, sixty to eighty feet wide, and one day the teacher found us all following our leader walking across on the handrail. We got six of the belt for that prank and didn’t venture near the river again.

(p7) There was an old stalker lived next door to our school at Balnacra, Kenneth MacLean, better known as ‘the King’, some people said ‘of the toads’. He lived alone and had a collie dog with a silver eye. About twice a year he yoked up the white horse in the cart and set off for Strathcarron [journey about 7 miles] in the forenoon, followed by the dog. Without fail he usually arrived back as we were coming out of school; and on looking down the road we could see the horse and cart, faithfully followed by the dog. When they came close enough we were able to see that the King hadn’t been left behind – he was asleep on the top of the coals. The horse went up the short piece of road to the cart shed and stood there until the neighbouring bodachs went out and escorted the King to his house and loosened the horse. The school playground was a very small enclosed piece behind the school, full of brambles bushes and stones and nettles, so we liked to play shinty or football on a lovely small green between the school house and the neighbouring house, but as it was on the crofters’ common grazing we had to be very watchful of the King. I had been given a football, size three, real leather panels, and we imagined ourselves as John Thomson of Celtic or Allan MacGrory of Rangers. One day the King came down the road unknown to us, grabbed our ball and put his knife through it. On another occasion he found our home-made shinty clubs in a little tile drain which was at one side of the green and when we came out for our play interval we found them all cut in kindling-size pieces. We all took a deep dislike to the old man for this and especially the time he rose out of the brackens above the green as we played on it (temporary teacher and all). She was newly finished school in Lochcarron and was relieving our teacher who had scarlet fever. (p8) He followed us into the school that day and cursed and swore at us all.

Some months later he was clearing out the old hay in his barn and set it alight by the burn running between his house and then school, (the burn was dry at the time). We were watching him from the clock-room window and when it was burning briskly he walked the few yards and disappeared into his house. Quick as little flashes, we were out with pails and jugs of water and put out his fire. Shortly after he came out and down to see what had happened, watched by us from our sanctuary, gave the hay a kick or two with his foot and lit it again, waited a while and sauntered home. We repeated the dousing and he came out again. This time he used his hands on the hay, felt it wet and gave a long hard look towards the school, lit it and waited until it was burning merrily and went back home. This time we didn’t bother to put it out, instead we gathered some mud and quickly made some mud balls, ran up the bank above his back door and stood in our smoke screen knowing well that he wouldn’t be long in appearing and as he did we let fly our barrage of mud balls which stuck to the wall around him and we bolted back to the safety of the school. At that moment our teacher appeared and saw a very angry King striding up to the school door. Curiosity got the better of us and we came out of the door when we heard the noise they were making and I can still see the gravel jumping up from the heels of the teacher’s feet as she stamped them in rage at the old man. The outcome was that we got three choices of punishment; first was that we all got the belt but the girls didn’t like that; second we’d write one hundred lines of ‘I’ll never play on the King’s green again’ and definitely none of us would do that. We all agreed on the third punishment and so lost our dinner-hour play time for one week.

(p9) In those days, 1920s and 30s, they held a cattle sale at Strathcarron and one year when the King went down with his transport, horse and cart, he unyoked the white horse and tied it to a ring in the wall of the building and went into the bar for a dram. There were two chaps in there from Lochalsh, cousins, Allan MacLennan and Christopher MacKerlich, both great practical jokers. The King had several drams and got talking to the cousins who decided that one of them would keep him occupied having more drams while the other went out, changed the white horse over with the hotel cow that was in the byre. The cow being hand-milked and very tame stood fully harnessed tied to the ring in the wall. When old King decided he had had enough he went out and spent the next five minutes of so trying his hardest to back the harnessed cow into the shafts of the cart, while the two heroes watched from the bushes.

On one occasion at New Year an old gillie friend of my father’s, Jockan from Sallachy, came over and spent the New Year with us at Achnashellach. There was snow on the ground and my father and Jockan went along to Lair to visit the neighbours on New Year afternoon. We came back home before it got dark, having enjoyed listening to Christine and Neil MacPherson playing the fiddle. The road up to our house was quite slippery as it had started to freeze the hard packed snow. Some time later we were sitting at the table having our supper when there was a knock on the door; on opening the door my mother was confronted by this blood stained apparition whom she recognized as the King and asked him to come in. As he entered the living room Jockan looked up and said in Gaelic ‘Who the devil is this? I think myself he is related to the brewer’. The King had slipped on the icy snow coming up the brae and his nose had lost a bit of skin which with the blood gave him a brewery look. After my mother had tidied him up with a wet cloth, he was seated at the table and I can still see him picking up the oatcakes and crumbling them with his hands onto the table. Both he and Jockan were athletes in (p10) their younger days (both were now at least in their mid-seventies) and eventually an argument got up about a race that had been run decades past. Till at last my father had to pull them apart and run the King home in his sidecar. On passing his house sometimes he gave me the odd sweet which he took out of his waist coat pocket and invariably they tasted strongly of black twist tobacco. On one occasion I saw him take a small thing like a piece of old dry heather twig out of the same pocket and put the end of it in his mouth and jabbing his teeth with it. On asking him what he was doing, he said that he had a touch of toothache and this was his cure. It turned out to be an otter’s penis dried and just like a small heather twig. He said it worked.

I heard him tell my father once that he had only once in his life seen a real wild cat and the pure wild cat as he had heard about had one nail at the point of its tail! I’m sure in his days at keepering he had trapped and shot many wild cats but only one real wild cat.

On another occasion at Balnacra he was moving a flock of sheep along the road when a motor-cycle and side-car came along and slowed down his speed, but carried on slowly through the sheep and when he reached the King he up with his walking stick and smashed the Perspex windscreen of the sidecar. Needless to say the man took off and didn’t wait to argue, if so he would have got the stick on the head I’m very sure.

During my time in Balnacra School I read a library book for boys called the Red Lynx, about a Red Indian boy of the at name and the ways in which he tracked and outwitted the white settlers in the mountains of Canada, the Rockies. I actually learned a lot of tracking techniques from that book and lived through it all as if I was a little Indian boy. When the teacher asked me to write a story about it I actually filled a whole jotter relating the story as if I had lived it and relished every moment of it.

(p11) I was in Balnacra School for four years and one incident I will never forget shortly after I went to school there. Our first teachers was Nelly Jackson, very strict disciplinarian who was bothered with a bad leg. Kenny Keg Mackay from Arinackaig, several years my senior and full of beans, gave her a hard time of it, and one day she was chasing him round the classroom, slate in hand and couldn’t catch him, but eventually managed to get close enough to take the slate down on his head and as the slate broke Keg’s head was framed. He’d the frame around his neck and still going until he eventually ran out of the door and as far as I remember he didn’t come back to school.

One afternoon in winter as I was walking home alone, at a little stream about sixty yards west of Allt a’ Mhuilean, I noticed that the banks were about two feet apart and I saw nothing better then to go down with a hand on each bank and started to swing to and fro over the water, about a foot deep in a longish pool. I don’t know what happened with my ploy but next thing I knew I was sitting in the pool with the water up to my tummy. I got up out of the pool, ran across the road into the wood, took of my short trousers and bashed them to a tree to try to dry them. When I had walked a bit after putting them on, my knees began to get sore as it was freezing and my trousers were chaffing my knees, so I took off my breeks and ran all the way home to keep warm. Another afternoon the King gave Duncan McLennan (Coulags) and me a brown paper bag to drown some of his kittens in and, as we had never done it before, we went down to the loch with the kittens in the bag and threw it into the loch and ran back to the school. As the kittens were a fair size, needless to say, they were (p12) back home almost as soon as we were at the school.

One day the school dentist arrived and as he took the first patient (Mary my sister) in, we were all listening outside. Suddenly we heard a scream then a long drawn out scream so we took to the hill above the school and though the teacher whistled and shouted we waited up there in hiding till we saw his car depart. We were scolded that time. Anna Jackson was the teacher then and kinder than her sister Nellie. We often lost caps and various things in the three ventilators in the classroom roof so one day Duncan and I decided we would try and get into the roof by the round closed ventilator at the east end of the school. We got onto the porch roof and then the girls handed us a small ladder which we set up on the porch roof and with Duncan holding the ladder and me trying to knock the ventilator in with a chunk of stone we were caught red handed by Anna our teacher, taken into the class room and given six of the best. I can still see the ball I was after, it had a raised flower pattern on it and Duncan’s two school caps all of which along with many other things must still be up there today half a century later [at least one cap, remains of a rubber ball, pieces of chalk and book covers were there in 2006].

The one thing that I had an awful dread of was dragon flies as in the summer time they used to be very numerous and buzzed around us as we walked to and from school along the lochside. The road was not tarred then and as I walked home I used to hit stones thrown in the air well out into the loch with my home-made shinty club. The clubs didn’t last very long as the stones were very hard on the fresh, sometimes soft wood. However, it made excellent practice for hitting a ball in the air and by the time I went to Lochcarron School I was pretty good all round at shinty.

(p13) At a young age I wanted to go fishing as I had been once out in the boat with my father when we lived up at Duiliech. There is a nice loch about a mile west of there [Loch na Leitreach?]. I was refused permission but eventually I got a switch of hazel or rowan, a piece of sewing thread and a pin which I bent and shaped something like a hook. I dug some worms and went down to a small stream below the [phone] kiosk at Achnashellach and to my surprise I was able to catch some small brown trout tiddlers and salmon parrs it was a perfect spawning burn in those days. It ran along from Lair to the end of Loch Dùghail from forty to sixty yards from the main road and more or less parallel to it. However, in the mid to late 1940s the ‘meadow’ as the flats were called then, was to be planted; so it was all drained down to the big ditch which also ran parallel to the road but from two to three hundred yards further away. When heavy rains came the burns that ran into my fishing stream clogged it up with sand and gravel, which was washed down from the railway which was also drained all the way from a line from the railway station to the bigger burn at Lair and up hill to near the skyline. The result was that the small stream filled up and spilled in to the drains which carried the water down to the big ditch which was full of weeds and not much use for spawning. It is interesting to note that it was Jock Peter MacKay and me that opened these drains as we both worked for the Forestry Commission there after coming home from the 1939-45 war. Long before the stream silted up I found my way sometimes with, and often without, my mother’s permission to other burns and hill lochs and was hooked on fishing at a very early age. As I got older I went further afield to fish and will touch on these episodes later on.

Lochcarron School (p14). Having reached the age of ten plus I had to go to school to Lochcarron and though I’d had only three years in school I was put in the qualifying class among pupils much younger than me but also a fair bit more educated than I was at that time. So one can understand that I felt pretty miserable and let down. I realized at once that a side school (e.g. Balnacra) with a non-qualified teacher was far short of the required standard to pass the ‘qually’. I think that year was the most miserable one of my whole life and our teacher then was not married and we could tell by his dress and walk to the school what mood he was in , and believe me if we made any mistakes on that bad mood day we paid dearly for it, usually by a few of the belt or a slap round the ears. It came to the point some time later that if we’d one spelling wrong we got the strap so you may see that we tried hard, really hard, to do our best, and when qualifying exam day came in the first week of May, the whole class passed. One day while we were having a written spelling lesson, we had to pass our own jotters two to the left to be corrected by someone else. He noticed two of the girls making a correction in some one else’s spelling and called them out to the floor and when he checked what they did , gave each of the two girls two of the best of the belt. We were in the old school at that time, in the senior room ,and beyond the science section of our room was the infants room, separated from the science section by a glass partition from six feet up to the ceiling. One morning after prayers in the infants room and we’d all gone out to our respective class rooms, we heard a real chorus of little voices coming from the infants room. On asking, at the mid-morning break, what all the sudden burst of laughter was for, we were told that one of the girls was clicking her finger and waving at the teacher as if her life depended. (p15) depended on it. ‘Well Jeannie’, said the teacher, ‘what is it?’. Quick as a flash Jeannie replied ‘please Miss, Charlie shit the floor’. ‘Well Jeannie, clean it up!,’ said the teacher.

Shinty was our main game, we played when we reached school in the morning, when we got out at 11 o’clock break it was always Slumbay versus Jeantown, again at lunch break and again in the afternoon and the final score for the day, at the end of the afternoon break, was sometimes into double figures. Slumbay was usually in the lead as we had an abundance of very good players, many of whom were to give sterling service to Lochcarron Shinty Club in the later years. I often wished we had the chance of a game against the adult team of that time which was very good . I’m sure we would have given them a very hard time of it with all our practice. We were like eels and could hit the ball from all angles in the air or on the ground. When I went home to Achnashellach at the weekends, I spent several hours each Saturday hitting a rubber ball against the end of our house just below Achnashellach Station.

The bicycle accident. About this time I was given a small bicycle – 18 inch frame – which my father had bought for me at a sale in Strathcarron. It had belonged to Willie Paris. I was able to cycle a few hours after I got it. On one occasion I was sent along to our croft at Lair to lift some potatoes. When I almost got to where the (phone) kiosk is now I put my sister sitting in a carrier at the rear of the bike just above the rear wheel. I gathered some speed on what was left of the brae and after I had passed the black gate leading in to the meadows, going fairly fast, I got into loose gravel in the middle of the road which was not tarred then, and crashed in a heap. My first worry was my sister and the bike as I felt OK. My sister then said, ‘look at your knee’ and on looking down saw blood pouring from my left knee and a huge flap of skin hanging from my knee cap. There is a very clear burn running below the road close by so I went down the bank and washed my leg injuries. We carried on to Lair and called on John Livingstone and his wife and asked if he would bandage it as the blood ran into my Wellington boot. He got a little bottle of Lysol and poured some into a bowl of hot water with which he washed it, then put a piece of pink lint and a proper white bandage on it. He kindly went and lifted a pail of potatoes for me. The pain was now acute and I could not walk so he sat me on the saddle of my bike and wheeled me all the way home. When we go it home Mam was out at the washing line and when she came in she spotted the bandage and asked what had happened. John Livingston said I had fallen off my bike and he had dressed it and that it would be OK in the morning. All that night I tossed and turned and could not sleep with pain so in the morning my mother sent for the doctor. It was Dr Paterson who was in Lochcarron then. The lint was stuck to the wound and it took a soaking in warm water to get it off, only to reveal a gaping hole and what looked like cooked meat. The Lysol had burnt the whole thing as it had not been diluted enough. I was eight weeks off school. It healed slowly but surely. The nurse had to cut the proud flesh with bluestone and to this day on the inside of my knee the scar of burning by Lysol can be seen – a very painful experience but no after effects.

Shinty. The first game I played for the big team was in the Dr Ferguson Cup about 1937-38. I remember I played wing centre against Mr Montgomery, the school teacher at Dornie, and as he was a big heavy chap I gave him quite a run about and I was light and very fit. We beat Kintail that day and I can still remember the meal in the Lochcarron Hotel. We were going to Beauly some time later in the season to play against the Beauly chaps . There were four of us traveling in Donald Tramps MacRae’s car. Almost at the bridge at Glencarron side of Loch Sgamhain the passenger side front wheel took off along the road and then turned off into the moor. Donald managed to keep the car on the road until he stopped it. The wheel had not been tightened properly and had dropped off. Luckily the four nuts were inside the hub cap of the wheel and we were soon on the road again. The four players in the car were John MacKenzie Ardaneaskan, Iain Moochan Finlayson, Alick Inky MacKenzie, both Lochcarron, and myself from Achnashellach. We changed in the Lovat Arms at Beauly. Alick Sant MacRae took me into (p16) the bar and gave me a glass of rum as he always had one before he played, especially if it was a cold day. He said the whisky affected one’s breathing but not the rum. I remember we won but can’t remember the score. [Lochcarron won the Strathdearn Cup in 1937 and 1939, and the Sir William Sutherland Cup in 1939].

First job. After I left school my first job was keeping the stags off the crofters crofts at Arinackaig just by their present-day sheep fank. Twice a day I had to climb the side of Creag an Eilean [about 350m], sometimes with a shot-gun or other times with a dog to scare them away, but they always came back in the morning. My pay was 20 shillings for seven days. On Willie Paris and Flora’s wedding day I can still see the bus passing Balnacra as I was between Meall an Fhithich (Ravens Rock) and Teanga an Da Allt (Tongue of the Two Burns) further east. I got a job as pony boy on Achnashellach in 1936. There was Alick Sant Mackay, rifle man, on the south beat with my father, and I had the pony. With Murdo Big Murdo MacLennan on the north beat there was Jackie MacKenzie Shieldaig, as rifleman, and Duncan, Murdo’s son, as pony man. The fishing gillie was Alick MacKenzie Arinackaig.

First thing every morning Duncan and I had to go down to the meadows and catch the ponies which after a few days became very difficult as they got wise to a hard day in front of them. One day as we caught them and were preparing to jump on their backs to take them up to the stables to be saddled, (my mare was a small white mare called Jessie, very docile and easy to handle and I had already jumped on her back), Duncan tried to jump on his mare, which belonged to his uncle Kenny MacNair Arinackaig. She had longer legs, so after one or two unsuccessful tries, Duncan gave a really big spring on the her back and overshot his target and slid right over her on his belly, up to his elbows in a soft patch of ground in which there was an iron spring. Hence his white shirt sleeves were a bright rusty red! . (p17) The following year Jessie the mare had a similar fate in store for me. As I sat on her back almost at the stable door, a big rat bolted across the road just below her nose . She swung aside in fright and I carried straight on and landed on the hard road. That same week Duncan went into the stall to saddle his mare as she was eating he breakfast of oats. She promptly let fly with her rear hooves and put him reeling out of the stable door with the clear imprint of her hoof on his thigh. He was off work for a couple of days.

Between the stalking seasons we worked together in the Forestry [Commision] at Achnashellach. After leaving school we started work on the same day brashing, thinning and then making fence posts of the thinnings in the plot of Japanese larch just beyond the overhead railway bridge. We then praned the Douglas Fir further along the road and about the Tinkers Bridge and railway bunkhouse right up to the hairpin bend on the Coulin Road. In 1938 Alick Sant MacRae went as full-time stalker to the Glencarron Estate, owned then by Lady Evelyn Cobbold. I became rifleman and Jimmy White MacKenzie was pony man. We usually had a six or seven mile walk before the stalking began at Coire Choinnich and sometimes we went round the world up the Coire Choinnich path to the big stone in Bealach Bhearnais , up to and along the top of Sgur na Feartaig down the one step path into Golden Valley and across the river opposite Lair.

When Neville Chamberlain was meeting Hitler in Munich in 1938, that day we went up the north west ridge of Sgur Na Ceannaichean (Merchants Rock) [915m] and Mr David Wills shot a stag on the edge of the face above the road. The stag rolled out of sight. Another one was got on the flats a mile or so further on. I dragged it down the east end which was green and very easy going. Having got it into the shooting brake, pre-Land Rover days, I sent the pony man home. We went up to collect the stag which had gone (p18) over the edge and found him lying at the bottom of the gorge that comes down the rock face, actually in bits. On impact at the bottom he landed on a sharp stone about the size of a hundred-weight bag of potatoes and his innards and stomach contents were splattered on the surrounding rock walls and over quite a wide area. We just left it where it lay but it went into the count which was 35 stags for the season.

The stags were fed on the flat between the railway and the river beyond the overhead bridge and as Coire a’ Bhàinidh was the sanctuary they didn’t have far to come to feed. They got a mixture of Indian corn (maize) and locust beans which was kept in a large galvanized bin, the food being put out in heaps from a sack. Nearly every year one of the herd would go and feed from the big bin when the feeder was putting out their feed in small heaps. When the chap went back to get more feed or close the bin, the thieving stag would lower his head and threaten the man. Needless to say there were no risks taken and the offender was invariably put down. One day in August 1939 I counted slightly over four hundred stags in Corie a’ Bhàinidh which was not fenced at that time. After the war there was still a large number of stags wintering on the flats and using the shelter of the corrie in bad weather. Gang poaching started up after 1945 and gangs from Strathpeffer and Contin area came up regularly. Sheep were also being taken. On Coronation Day (1952) I was on the flats across the river from Bruach na Piobaire (the Piper’s Bank) and on going through a gap in an old earth wall, on a deer-made track where some whin roots had been exposed by the constant use of deer traffic, I noticed quite a bit of sheep wool was snagged as someone had dragged one or more sheep through the gap towards the river, railway and road.

(p19) Hill loch fishing The station master at Achnashellach prior to 1939 was George Seaton and, as he was a very keen fisher, we soon formed a close friendship and fished most of the lochs and burns from Coulags to Torridon, Coulin, Loch Rosque, Monar and Beinn Dronaig. If George was on early shift he finished in the early afternoon and we’d set off to fish some hill loch having gone as far as Loch an Laoigh (Bearnais) [a four mile walk] , Loch a’ Chlaidheimh [nine mile walk] near Loch Monar and had some great sport On one occasion my father, George and I set off for Bearnais and Loch an Laoigh and got there by mid-afternoon. I let the two older men fish where they chose. The best place in those days was the mouth of the main burn coming in at the north end of the loch [Abhainn Bhearnais]. They kept pulling in two trout at a time fairly regularly. I went to the south east side of the loch where another burn came in [probably All Bheithe] and I was getting quite a number of smallish fish when bang I hooked a bigger fish. He took off leaping high out of the water but each time he did that I dropped the point of the rod to the water. Eventually I landed him and he weighed three-and-a-half pounds, a real beauty , short and very thick. That was the nicest fish I ever caught and the fly he took had green wings, but by the time he took it there was hardly a feather or even body on it, it was almost a bare hook. One one occasion post-war, I caught one hundred and one trout on Loch a’ Chlaidheimh. I didn’t have a bag big enough to hold them so I stuffed my pockets, cut the lining of my jacket at the breast pocket and put them in there. When I got home I weighed them (all 101) and they weighed 36lbs.

Christopher MacPherson, whose brother Duncan was keeper at Beinn Dronnaig, and I walked from Achnashellach to Loch an Laoigh one day pre-war, fished to the bottom end of the loch and then went down to visit (p20) his brother and sister at Beinn Dronaig. After having some food and a dram then a blether for a while Duncan came back up to the loch with us and we fished from the boat as we now had a ghillie! I still remember that walk back up to the loch as the heel came off my one of my very slight dress shoes which I wore that day for lightness. I threw the heel away and bashed the exposed nails in the shoe with a stone until it became comfortable. As I knew the last stalker and his wife who lived in Bearnas along with older members of his family of seven, I was somehow drawn to the place. Old John Enshop MacRae and his wife lived in Balnacra, when I went to school there, and were a very nice old couple compared to their neighbour the King. They must have left Bearnas in 1898 or 99 as their youngest son Roddy is still alive [1982] as is his sister Kate and living in the old home at Balnacra. They were born in Craig when their father moved from Bearnas. Roddie was my fishing partner on occasions pre- and post- war to Loch an Laoigh. Old John MacRae did not have very fluent English and on one occasion when in the hill with a guest he was asked how he got his provisions over to Bearnas. So his reply was ‘up the ceum on the back of the each’ (up the path on the back of the horse). When asked what he had for breakfast his answer was ‘brose’. When asked what that was he replied ‘meal and water skitter scatter in a bowl’. On one occasion I crossed Loch Dùghaill by boat to near the island and walked up Creag an Eilean and on to Loch an Laoigh, fishing the small lochs on the way there After having fished for an hour or so it got very dull and like rain so I decided to make for home, started to run up from the loch side and didn’t stop until I touched the boat at Loch Dùghaill, by that time quite a damp young chap. On another trip there, again minus a coat, I took a sheet of corrugated iron from Bearnas house on my back all the way to the Arinackaig fank. It acted like a sail in the strong wind and I got blown up hill and kept fairly dry.

(p21) Territorial ArmyAs I was in my teens during the Spanish Civil War. I always listened to the news to see and hear how things were going. My father and George Seaton, both Great War veterans renewed their long sessions of war stories after and between evening train times and I stood there in the station office at Achnashellach practically doing everything but dodging bullets and shells for hours, until at last I began to get restless and would have volunteered there and then if I was of age at that time or got the chance. Most of the older chaps in the area were in the territorial army Seaforths. Jackie MacKenzie Shieldaig was in the Lovat Scouts and immediately he suggested I should join them I did. Along with Jock Stewart from Strathconan, one of the stalkers at Glencarron. We went in a 15cwt truck to Shieldaig in May 1939 and signed on in Donnie Sutherland’s one of the Lochcarron Estate’s keeper’s house. The truck was driven by PSI Oxley, a cavalry man, and having picked up Alick MacRae Kishorn and Jock Stewart at Glencarron, Jackie and I, Tommy MacGregor and Dolie MacKintosh at Kishorn we headed for Shieldaig and going too fast round the bend at the stable in Shieldaig Glen went plonk into the side drain and a culvert. After a time we got the truck back on the road and on or way. We had two weeks under canvas in June at Strathpeffer and were on maneuvers with our ponies. I brought my father’s white mare Jessie with me.

Call-up for the War –to Beauly Things were not looking good in the papers and on the radio and eventually on Friday 1st September we were called up. We were out stalking that day and there were two stags got a mile up the glen from the old house at Bearnas. As we only had one pony we left the other stag out overnight intending to go for it next day. As we climbed the path above Bearnas house heading for the one step and home, I kept looking back and wondering when or if I would ever (p22) see the place again. When we got to the larder we were told that all the TA personnel had been called up and were leaving by train on the Saturday 2nd September for Beauly, Head quarters of the Lovat Scouts. The two non-TA chaps went for the other stag that day. We got our uniforms on and joined the train about mid-day and disembarked at Beauly, made our way to the Phipps Hall where we stayed overnight. At 11am on Sunday 3rd September while listening to the radio in the Hall we heard the declaration of war being read out.

The main body had not arrived – not possible so soon from North and south Uist and Skye and other further away places. So my father had come down with his Baby Austin and we got home until the Tuesday – Jackie, Alick, Dolie, Tommy and I. On the Tuesday we joined the troop train and got back to Beauly fairly late in the afternoon and marched up to our billets in the byres and stables and barns at Beaufort Farm. Chaos ruled mainly. We slept in the byre on the concrete floor with three blankets, straw palliasse and pillow and boy was it cold and hard. We had some soup and stew to eat out of tin bowls and plates which when washed were stacked on the trestle tables in the open. When you went for breakfast in the morning they were stuck together by rust having not been dried. A couple of warmer days later we either picked the maggots out of those bowls and tins or did without any food. We had billet guard and picket on horse-lines to do. The ponies were tied six feet apart to a rope stretched between two strainers and heel stops on one rear leg and a pin hammered into the ground to keep them from turning round and kicking each other to bits. Those on guard when off duty slept under the belt for driving the threshing mill and often the rats slid down the belt and jumped off to land on a sleeping body. One chap who had some grease spilt on his puttees (we wore puttees, britches and spurs) had the strap of his puttee eaten clean through by a rat. (p23) We eventually got good at killing them with our bayonets. They were all shapes and sizes of them running about. Our main task for the first period of time was looking after and training the ponies, being kitted out with saddles and fighting equipment. We trained in front of Beaufort Castle on the ponies. They went round in a wide circle and on command we slid off the tail end of our ponies and jogged by the side of the following one for a bit and then sprang off the ground on to the pony’s back and this went on for some time. Included in the scheme was sitting back to front, sideways, on our backs, on our bellies on the back of the ponies, always with the pony trotting in a circle. For the first while we were very stiff and sore all over, especially our posteriors as we spent hours in the saddle or bare-back, but soon we were very competent riders. On one occasion there was a special train of a disbanded English cavalry regiment’s horses arrived at Muir of Ord and were stabled there in a farm. Those horses were called cobs and were a good bit higher than our garrons. There was a dozen of us from B Squadron detailed to fetch a dozen cobs back to Beauly. We were transported along with our bridles and reins in a 15 cwt truck to bring them along. Most of the fetching party were from Uist and Skye along with Iain MacKenzie Aultbea and me. Iain and I were in no hurry to get our horses and by the time we went into the buildings the others had bridled their ponies and were coming out. We bridled ours and as we came out we saw the others careering round a field flat out. We mounted them near the gate entering the field and walked them on. Suddenly right at the gate Iain’s pony in front of mine stopped, kicked up her two heels as high as she could and Iain sailed gracefully through the air and landed on his back. On seeing this mine did exactly the same and I landed exactly as Iain did. As we still had a (p24) grip on the reins the ponies did not run away or get away. After a few runs round the field we started to move along the farm road towards the main road and suddenly it turned into a Derby or Grand National. We went flying along the farm road, the horse in front of me wanted away, jumped the stock fence in to the field and mine followed. Once in the field they really went, then jumped out on to the main road and I’m sure no horses broke that record time to Beauly to this day – not even the morning of the A Squadron stampede.

Our horses were fed every morning at 06.30 and one blustery and windy wet morning when A Squadron’s were being led to watering a gust of wind came and blew the horse blankets of one of the ponies which startled it and others so much that a number of them and eventually most of them bolted. As we were going down to Ferry Park we heard the clatter of hooves coming along the road and we managed to stop some of them but not all. They were rounded up later. Several of the chaps were injured , some so severely that they were unfit for active service. We were billeted in a church up Croyard Road for the winter months. One evening one of our chaps brought his pony fully saddled into the church – I can still hear the clattering of his hooves before rider and pony were shouted out. During our stay there we had a measles epidemic and most of us went down with it. When I felt ill I picked my palliasse and three blankets up and made my way to the end of the church near the vestry door, which was the sick quarters. As I got there this old chap from Skye suggested that I should come alongside him and share our blankets then we would be warmer, five above and one below. I thought it a good idea and we did this. Shortly after he wrapped himself in the blankets and turned away leaving me with practically no covering and shivering as the (p25) weather was awful and bitterly cold [five weeks of snow and frosts down to minus 5 degrees C – Melville]. I rose and grabbed the top three blankets, pulled them off him, grabbed my straw palliasse and straw pillow and left him with a mouth full of swears as I moved a bit away from him. We were eventually moved from the church to our hospital which was a wooden shed with a tin roof, between the church and the main street. There was a small round stove in the middle of the shed and as I lay in bed I could see the stars through the gaps in the planks by my head. As the stove was lit one could not see the others for smoke. Some of the chaps were really ill there, one seriously, and it was a long time before he rejoined us. Dr Ferguson who was in Lochcarron came to see us one evening along with Danny Mòr MacLean, as the doctor’s brother Norman was with us in the hospital by this time. He asked Dolie MacKintosh Kishorn to send a telegram to his doctor brother earlier in the day as Dolie was fetching us drinks and food which we couldn’t really eat, being feeling so rotten. Dolie sent the telegram – ‘come at once sinking fast Norman’ and Dr Fergie came post haste. He must have complained to the authorities as we were moved to better accommodation and were soon OK again.

To Nottingham. Still in Beauly and in the early part of the year [1940], we were one day told to get ready to move, lock, stock and barrel. We did that and got on to a special troop train and set off into the night and the unknown. During the night we stopped at Perth, were shunted to a fro for a bit then stopped for a long period of time. Eventually we started moving again going back the way we had come and landed back in Beauly. Apparently Finland was to be our destination as the Finns were resisting the Russians with devastating effect and we were going to help them. Who ever decided to, or what force worked that out, I reckon we’d never have come back if we’d gone there at that time so ill equipped as we were. (p26). About March we and our ponies were moved by rail down to England, the Nottingham area [Melville gives the names of eight villages used for billeting]. I was one of the advance party who went a week or so before the main body {21st March 1940 – Melville]. We were in civilian digs, John MacDonald, later on in pipe band, from South Uists and I were in digs together. He was killed almost at the end of the war. I still remember stepping across his body as he lay on the ground as if asleep with a small hole in the forehead exactly between his eyes. We had a feather bed in which one sank almost out of sight and was very warm. The food was pretty grim, a piece of toast and one sausage or one egg for breakfast. The man of the house was a small elderly chap who never spoke to us, played darts most of the time so much so that he had almost gone through his dart board at the twenty five and the bull. Our ponies were taken away [Melville says the ponies were removed from 22nd April 1940 following secret orders to prepare the Regiment to move overseas] and we were mechanized and given transport of all descriptions. We still had to do a route march each week and as we still wore our puttees, breeches and spurs and the weather got hotter and worst of all my boots, one pair, were getting too small for me. We suffered and especially me suffering hell. Again some of us went down with measles this time German measles or rubella. Some of us were really ill and delirious with it and as we were billeted by now in a Church of England monastery – cold marble floors – we were carted off by ambulance to a hospital in Sutton.

When I came out I was asked if I had ridden a motorbike, which I had once, about a mile, on my uncle’s, with him on the pillion about three years previously. OK, I was told to get on this 500cc BSA and go to Nottingham for one dozen light bulbs and some writing pads and envelopes. I started up the bike , put it into gear, foot change new to me, and made a perfect take off. As I went along the road I wondered and worried what (shop) was I going (p27) to find in Nottingham. As I came into the town I slowed down and there in front of me was an electrical shop and next door a stationery shop. I did my purchases and got back to our billets at Kelham. A couple of days after that our permanent dispatch rider went down with measles and I got his job temporarily, which meant I was running between our companies and Headquarters every day until we moved up to Greenock at the latter part of April [1940].

Greenock. Our transport went by road in convoy, we spent one night in Catterick Camp and next day we arrived in Greenock [1st May 1940 Melville] and we were billeted in a sugar factory in the town, not far from the docks. During our short stay in Greenock, with a couple of mates I went walking down the street one evening fairly late when I was suddenly struck with a fearful tummy pain. I had a quick glance round, no one in sight, jumped a rail surrounding a huge water tank about thirty feet in diameter, dropped my pants and quickly relieved my bowels. The water tank was for air raid precautions and fire control in the event of air raids which they surely got some time later on during the Clydeside blitz. Several times during our service we experienced this nasty belly pain and lo and behold if one was caught short the result was rather messy. We reckon there was some potion put into our food now and then to clean us out. We idled about there in Greenock for several days until the main part of the regiment came and then boarded ship. – the Ulster Prince rumoured to be bound for Norway. As we passed between the outer isles and the mainland we could see the hills of Skye and home. About thirty-six hours later we landed at Tórshavn in the Faroes.

Faroes (p28) We landed on the 25th May 1940. It turned out to be a nice day and as we came into the pier to disembark, there was hundreds of people there to meet us. We took over from a detachment of Royal Marines who were guarding the main installations – radio station, Fort Skance, pier, marine cable telephone station. We were billeted in the main hall and other halls in the town and the regiment was soon dispersed on the major islands throughout the Faroes – of which there are seventeen altogether. As each squadron was moved about the islands in rotation to provide guards on certain strategic points, we were moved by boat. Some times it was on the Suigrill, the regular mail boat which took us especially to the larger islands which was on her regular route. Other times we went by the Poppy, a forty-eight to fifty foot Norwegian fishing boat [formerly the Jalso - Melville] which had come over to Faroe some time earlier to escape the Nazis and was commandeered by the British. The chap in charge of her was John MacIssac from Benbecula – she was crewed by Scouts and was a very sea-worthy craft. I remember on some occasions when being moved about , we had great difficulty keeping our feet on the deck and more difficulty in holding the Bren gun from going over the side as we always had to have a Bren mounted on the tripod in case of aerial attack which was prevalent at that time. We often had visits from the Luftwaffe, some bombing, some strafing and reconnaissance raids . On one occasion when the Loch Garry was tied up at the Tórshavn pier they came over and dropped a few bombs. The one which struck the Loch Garry went straight through the side of the ship several feet above the water line and did not explode. Our padre was wounded by a bullet in the thigh as he was on board (p29) on his way home on leave. Ronald Robertson by name, he was the parish minister in Lochcarron pre-war and was married to a local girl whose father had the store and bakehouse – he was known as The Beauty , John MacKenzie was his proper name.

The Loch Garry ran the gauntlet of bombs, mines and U-boats for a couple of years but eventually came to grief off the Irish coast. It was she who ferried the troops to and from Leith when we got a leave – once only while in the Faroes. She also carried stores and supplies. Once while on unloading fatigues we were unloading cases of beer from the hold and if cases happened to be broken or even broken with a kick, we helped ourselves to all the beer we could consume on the spot. We were usually very merry and towards the end of the fatigue duty everyone was in good spirits.

Leave I came home on the Loch Garry on leave in the summer of 1941 and when we were off the Aberdeen coast en route to Leith, during the night we heard several explosions, one so close that the Garry rocked and keeled over quite a bit. We jumped from our bunks and ran onto the decks to see some of the ships in the convoy had been hit. One tanker about five hundred yards on our port side was ablaze from stem to stern as it was a dark night we could see the figures of the crew silhouetted against the flames as they ran about on the deck. I often wonder how they fared as the convoy could not stop even to pick up survivors. We disembarked at Leith during the following day and made our way to the station to catch the north-bound train. After having been in the station bar for some time and having had a few pints, we made our way along the platform, dragging our kitbags, nearly all with a couple of bottles of duty-free whisky in them. There was a chap JA Beaton Portree who was the (p30) unlucky one who was stopped at the bottom of the gangway and searched. While the customs chap went through his kitbag, JA opened his small pack put the bottle therein to his head and drained it, tossed it into the harbour and said to the customs chap ‘that’s one you won’t get’. He got two others though! When we were about the Forth Bridge on our way north the effects of the beer began to tell on our bladders and as there was no corridor on the train there were no toilets so there was only one thing for it – the windows. As one looked out of the window up and down the train there was a fountain coming out of each one. We all enjoyed our leave and I fished quite a lot and we felt sad when the time came for us to go back. While I was home I caught an eighteen pound salmon fishing from the shore at Pin Bay. My friend Hugh MacKenzie Evanton came up for a couple of days but we had no luck then. The British Honduras contingent of wood cutters were working at Achnashellach, felling the stand o large mature larch trees above the station at Achnnashellach. Hugh and I took a walk up to their saw mill not far from the station one day. The sawyer was having difficulty with a large log on the bench and it kept getting stuck each time he would it on. Eventually he took it back clear of the saw , tried the big saw with his finger as if looking for a wobble in the saw, then he put his finger between the saw and the bench. Quick as a flash the finger got pulled in beside the side of the revolving blade and the slit in the bench . As it was painful when trying to pull it out he leaned over a bit and the teeth of the saw caught his arm and in a fraction of a second the shirt, flesh and muscle was ripped and mangled of his arm from elbow to shoulder. I can still see (p31) the mangled flesh, muscle and shirt hanging out at his elbow. His mates were all screaming and shouting and I’ve never seen an engine being stopped so quickly. One evening during that leave while out fishing on Loch Dùghaill with my father, we heard the drone of airplane engines and on looking up counted over a hundred planes heading due north, probably to fox the enemy radar systems while on their way to bomb the continent. I felt sad and wondered how many of those chaps who passed overhead would return home that night.

Return to the Faroes We returned to the Faroes on the Loch Garry and while waiting for our escort ships in the Pentland Firth encountered the biggest sea swell we’d ever seen in our lives. While our escorts were approaching us, they were two large armed trawlers, the Preston North End and Lincoln City, went down in a trough and us in another and we could not see the tops of each others masts. It was a fantastic feeling to be up in the air one minute and down in the depth the next. We got back to the Faroes without incident. Our morale at that time was pretty low as most of our pals and friends in the 4th Seaforths had been captured at Dunkirk and us being stuck away in mid-ocean miles to the north could do nothing to help. About that time there were volunteers required for commandos and paratroops and glider pilots and I applied in writing for each one as they came up. It was a long time later I learned that my applications, and I presume that those of some others, were put in the waste paper basket by Major Anthony Wills, now Lord Dulverton, who was our sniping officer at that time, was on the panel who chose the volunteers but did not want to lose some of his best shots. That I suppose saved some of our lives, if not all, as most of the chaps who went were lost at Dieppe, Narvik or Arnhem. (p32) While stationed at Tórshavn we had a lot of guard duty to do as it was the capital of the islands and quite a large town, had lots of buildings and installations to be guarded in case of an invasion by the enemy to occupy the islands. If that had come about there would not have been many supply ships reached Britain as they ferried men and stores etc from America and Canada. The Faroes would have been an ideal submarine base.

Fitness Our squadron commanding officer at that time was Major Richard Fleming and he was a fitness fanatic, as they say nowadays. We used to go on long route marches, sometimes in full service marching orders (FSMO) which included our large pack and sometimes in Battle Order which meant as before with the exception of the big pack. One day in Tvøroyri he took us on a seven mile route march round the end of a long fjord and when we had reached our destination we were made to strip off all our clothes and working in pairs made a package of all our clothes, equipment and rifles, all inside our gas capes. The complete thing was about four feet long and fifteen inches wide and a foot deep. When tied securely and done properly it floated. We were then ordered into the sea by this time shivering with cold and apprehension, wondering if our package would really float, leak or sink. He grabbed our package, placed a Bren gun on top and swam a considerable distance to prove it worked. As most of us could not swim at that time, we did not venture out of our depth but got ourselves wet just the same. After a few minutes the Major came ashore and shouted ‘three minutes to dress and line up on the road’. Our biggest difficulty was to dry our bodies, dry enough to get our clothes on in such a short time, but we need not have worried as some of our packs were not too waterproof including the Major’s and anyone with (p33) a torn or frayed gas cape. There is nothing as difficult as trying tom get a wet body into dry clothes or even socks. We were lined up on the road and marched off with the Major in front. When we had marched a couple of hundred yards, we were given the order to double and another couple of hundred yards to march and so it went on as a forced march for seven miles back to the billets. Our sergeant at that time was a chap from Shieldaig. One evening he got in touch with some Faroe fishermen newly back from Aberdeen having been there in their fishing smack selling their cargo of fish, and as they had plenty of whisky on board they had a large evening. In the morning when we arose and looked out of the billet windows, there was a couple of ducks gobbling up someone’s vomit. After a few gobbles at it they’d walk a couple of yards for a drink from a small drain and so it went on until eventually the two ducks were really drunk and staggered about the place.

Floating mines While we were in Tvøroyri we were approached one afternoon by a Faroe man who see had several mines floating in a fjord across a mountain from where we were. Two of us were detailed to go with him and sink or blow up the mines with an anti-tank rifle which fired a bullet about 3/4inch in diameter and 51/2 inches long. He took the rifle which was fairly heavy owing to the thickness and length of the barrel. He wore a type of home-made moccasin made out of pig-skin. He had a gold tooth and one gold earring, first time we had ever seen a man wearing earrings. He had sailed the world in Danish merchant ships. He stuck a plug of tobacco in his mouth and went over that hill like a goat and would not let either of us carry the AT rifle. We reached the sea across the hill and were able to sink two mines and blow one up. This happened if we were able or lucky enough to hit one of the horns or spike shaped thinks in which the detonators were on those mines. (p34) On some occasions when the mines came ashore and came in contact with the rocks they exploded and could cause a great deal of damage. I once saw a British destroyer which had the front piece from bow to the bridge missing as if cut off by a knife and she was still moving under her own steam.

Boxing While still in Tvøroyri we were all very keen on having boxing lessons as we had a PT instructor who was a keen boxer. One evening after our canteen closed, it was run by one of our corporals James Campbell, we could buy cigarettes, chocolates and beer, draught and bottled, but no spirits. This evening we were getting ready for bed when two of our boys had a small difference of opinion. It was suggested that they put on the gloves to sort it out. Neil Campbell from South Uist was well built and a stocky chap though a wee bit slow in his actions. Malcolm ‘Calum Mor’ MacKenzie Aultbea a tall lanky chap with a black moustache and a pretty bad squint. They were practically stripped as we were, some in bed on the floor others getting ready for bed. When the gloves were tied on by the appointed or maybe self-appointed referee, Donald Piggie MacDonald Aultbea. After shaking hands, he got in the centre of the floor and they sparred about like a couple of professionals, then Neil landed one on Calum’s nose and a little blood came. That was enough to make Calum really see red and he began to swing his long arms like flails. One of his punches must have had an eye-watering effect on Neil and immediately what had started out in fun was now in dead earnest. We let it go on for about thirty seconds more and all jumped up and tried to pull them apart which was not easy as anything that came within reach was a target for either of them. Ten minutes later all was forgiven and forgotten. (p35) Any argument that arose at that time was usually settled with the gloves on. We had a chap, Jimmy, from Perth who had come to us from the Black Watch, regular battalion, and had cups and medals for boxing. He was sparring around with me when this English chap from our HQ Signals Section came in to have a go with my sparring partner. It was obvious from the signaler’s actions that he had boxed before and often. After circling round each other and the odd jab going out, Jimmy tried a left hook, his glove traveled about eight inches, caught the English signaler under the jaw, lifted him clear off his feet and he was out cold on his back on the floor, his eyes wide open. The victor put out a challenge and who took it up but The Piggie. He was a southpaw and gave Jimmy quite a lesson in the art of boxing including a black eye. It was strange at that time to see all ranks from private to major going about with black eyes. It helped to break the monotony.

Forced march challenge During our stay in the Faroes our Colonel (Lt Col. Hon. I Leslie Melville) was replaced by a younger man who was a regular from the Seaforths (Lt Col. Adam Fairrie MBE – Camerons). One evening in the officers mess at Tórshavn the new CO spoke up and maintained that the Lovat Scouts were not very fit, whereupon he was challenged by our company commander (of forced and route march fame) that he could get x number of men out of one platoon in B Company that would undertake to do any march, dressed in Battle Order, that the colonel would route for them. (p36) There were about eighteen picked out. We were excused guard duty the night before the march and told we would be excused the following night after we came back as well. We left the billets at Tórshavn after it started to get bright at 7 in the morning and walked about two miles to the end of the B road and after that it was overland, up hill and down dale and through rivers up to our waist still we came to our goal which was Vestmanna where Jackie MacKenzie and his section were on post duty. We had a quick cup of hot tea there and then traced our steps back to Tórshavn . We passed the town clock then at the end of the pier at 8.10 pm which had given us our departure at 7am, having walked 48 miles in a little over 13 hours. No one dropped out and we all marched through Tórshavn singing and whistling till we reached our billets on the pier. We were each given a tot of rum before our meal. It wasn’t much but it made us a bit tipsy, probably due to fatigue. Contrary to promises we were on guard duty the next night.

Guard duties and seven days CB

On one occasion I was on HQ guard. This was close by a small bay practically surrounded by buildings into which there was a small wooden jetty on which there was a large heap of empty food tins. As I walked about I disturbed a black cat who had his head stuck in a tin. When he heard me he ran away and fell off the jetty into the water. He swam out and out into the bay and the tin got lower and lower until eventually it disappeared. There was nothing I could do to save the unfortunate beastie. Shortly after that our platoon was on stand-to duty and when on stand-to could be called out at any time during the night. As it happened we were called out by Sir Simon Campbell Orde at around 5am. As we lay in our beds fully clad except for our boots. When we were awake first thing some of us did was light up a cigarette which we puffed while putting on our boots, steel helmet and grabbing our rifles and made for the door which was left open by the officer when he shouted ‘stand to’. As I was one of the first through that door with a fag in my mouth, I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice saying ‘MacKenzie, you are on a charge for smoking in the blackout’. There was no word that the electric light was steaming out onto (p37) the square. I was in front of the same officer that afternoon and got seven days CB (confined to barracks) and when given that punishment one was on parade or whatever during daytime and the evening was spent in the cookhouse peeling potatoes, spud bashing, for next days dinner.

We were in the museum billets at Tórshavn at the time and I happened to be assisting the armourer when one day I noticed and elderly man crossing the field behind our billets. He had a milk pail in his hand. He suddenly put his free hand to his chest and pitched forward onto his face on the ground. I immediately ran up to where he lay and found him stone dead. He died of a heart attack.

Luftwaffe downed A German bomber came over one day and dropped a stick of bombs, but luckily they missed their targets, our billets and the armed trawlers at anchor near by. Later, one of the bombers was not so lucky when he tried to bomb some shipping. He was hit by some Bren gun fire and a couple of bullets cut some petrol pipes which forced him to come down in the sea. The four crew members were captured by one of our motor cycle patrols [21st February 1941 - Melville] . We were for several days giving assistance to a local diver who fastened wire ropes round the plane which was lifted from the sea bed by the cranes on the Baranda, the supply ship running between the Faroes and Leith, and which took the Heinkel bomber back to this country or I should say what was left of it when the souvenir hunters had finished. I’ve still got a wire cutter taken from that plane.

Fun and games We were still at museum billets at Christmas 1940 and after Christmas dinner was over, one of our chaps, Alick Macrae Kishorn went into one of the huts next door to find a huge tray of turkey bones in that hut and when he asked if there was any to spare, he was quickly ejected from the hut out (p38) onto the snow- covered square. On hearing the noise going on outside, everyone spilled out of the eight or so huts which faced each other and started the largest scale scrap one ever saw. There were curses and fists flying everywhere till eventually the snow got redder and redder with blood. Eventually the Sergeant Major, Orderly Officer and Orderly Sergeant arrived on the scene and after some time managed to restore peace and to chastise their cook who had brought the tray to his own pals’ billet. Several B Company chaps one night rolled a full 50 gallon barrel of beer from the pier at Tórshavn up the street all the way to those billets, round the back of one of them and in the end door. As those huts were built on a steep bank there was plenty of room for the barrel and having lifted a section of the floor, it was dropped in and scoffed fairly quickly. The barrel would have been discovered years after that when the huts were dismantled to make room for new houses. After New Year, Donnie Trapper Campbell walked up from the pier one night but wasn’t so lucky. He was arrested with a case of whisky on his shoulders by the Red Caps (Military Police), newcomers to the Faroes, and he was sentenced to 56 days in the glasshouse (Army Penitentiary) in this country. Shortly after going to the Faroes, there was an Under-23 years football match arranged between the Regiment and the Faroese, played at Tórshavn. I was one of those capped that day. We got beaten but were not dismayed. There was no grass at all on the pitch, only gravel and God help anyone who fell. Skin came off in large patches from various parts of our bodies. We played one game in another island at a later date - the wind was so cold and strong that it kept blowing the ball up a hill by the side of the pitch and the Faroe men played the day with long johns below their sports clothes, wise chaps. Once we were stationed in Gota, a gale got up during the night, so severe that we had to jump out of our beds and hold the end of our Nissen hut from coming in on us as the hut was wobbling like a jelly and acting like a concertina. Maybe it was a retribution on us as before the gale got too strong we were daring each other to run round the hut in our shirt tails and barefoot. Boy was it draughty but at one time there was a circle round the hut (p40) as everyone therein got up and did the run.

Next morning we had to vacate the area as so did the natives as there was a large magnetic mine on the beach not far from our hut. If it had exploded we’d have probably been badly hurt. I know our hut wouldn’t stand the blast. One dark night almost at lights out, 21.59h, two chaps were coming to the pier billets from Tórshavn, on their left hand was a sheer wall of rock thirty feet high and on their right hand the sea. When they were about one hundred yards from the billets they saw the lights of a car leave the town heading in their direction . They panicked as there was no where to go so they both fell into the sea thinking it was the orderly officer doing his rounds. Luckily there was a ship tied to the pier and one of the stern ropes sagged into the water. John Monk and D J Maclellan managed to grab the rope in the dark and hang on until help came in the shape of a rowing boat from nearby.

We spent Christmas 1941 in Pier Billets. There was a couple of armed trawlers tied to the pier. When we went for and were having our breakfast Jock Buchanan who was on sentry duty walked into the dining room, rifle slung on his shoulder, tin hat on the side of his head and shouted to all and sundry ‘a merry syphilis and a clappy New Year’. Luckily for him the orderly officer wasn’t about at the time so Jock was put to his bed and was replaced by a non-guard chap who stood in for him and less than a couple of hours later he was also carried to his bed and yet another replacement put in his place. There was a comradeship arose between us all that was fantastic and one would never let his mates down.

Motor cycle patrols (p39) Motor cycle patrols were started some time after we came to the Faroes. They were much more interesting than the never-ending guard duties we had to do. On one occasion Alick MacRae and I were detailed to go to an isolated house at Kirkjubøur where there was a small detachment of Navy chaps on watch. We were told to leave before it got dark round about 9pm. Alick and I went to the NAAFI and had a couple of pints before we set out. I went off in front and had not gone very far when I met an idiot of a Faroe man in a car and we passed on the wrong side of each other on the narrow twisting road. Shortly after that I passed a chap on horseback near a bend in the road just by a stone bridge. Alick had been coming along behind me. Some time after I passed the horseman I stopped as there was no sign of Alick. On going back to where I had passed the horse, I found Alick with the motor cycle firmly lodged in a peat bog and Alick groping in the bog for several tins of bully beef which he had inside his jacket. We eventually found them all and continued on our way. Apparently, as Alick was almost at the horseman, his horse shied across the road and Alick had to take evasive action and head for the ditch. I had the mail for the Navy chaps in my great coat pocket and when we had delivered our tins and letters we had a cup of tea and headed back to Tórshavn and our bed.

Comradeship (p41) We were at a small village named Fuglafjørður, a section of us with Lieutenant MacDonald Tote in charge, and we had to have a billet guard to protect our equipment. I was a member of the three-man guard and was on middle shift 8pm to 10pm. I was mounted at my post as the Army saying goes. There was a dance in the village hall about one hundred yards from where I stood on guard. When I was not relieved at 10pm I wondered where my mates had gone but by the time of 11.30pm I was wondering more than ever what was going on, so I sauntered along towards the hall hoping to see someone to relieve me. On looking into the hall door I saw my relief dancing in the packed hall and a Faroeman dancing about with my relief’s Balmoral on his head. I could not catch Allen’s eye but I did see the orderly officer come into view and he spotted me, came to the door and said come this way, marched me back to the billets and shouted on Corporal Fergusson who luckily for himself had returned while I was away. Lieutenant MacDonald asked Ferguson what was happening so Ferguson said to me ‘Didn’t I post you at 10 o’clock?’. To protect Corporal Ferguson I said yes, knowing that Allan had been seen and was too far gone to be on duty anyhow. I was put under open arrest and next day went with an escort by mail boat to appear in front of the Commanding Officer at Tórshavn who sentenced me to fourteen days detention. I was put into a concrete shed with a corrugated roof and sides. The door was a division of corrugated iron as well. I was given two low trestles, three planks, three blankets and a pail to do the necessary in. The weather was bitterly cold. I could see the stars shining at night through the small cracks at the top of the door. I was charged with deserting my post while on guard. I took the full rap to save the corporal his stripes . I knew Fergie well and I have (p42) never once regretted what I did to shield him.

There was a chap under the same roof as me, but there was a hole in the dividing sheet of tin large enough to pass a cigarette or matches through though we were not supposed to have any after being searched – but I did and passed one to him now and then. I can’t remember what he was in for but as he had been striped of sergeant rank and jailed as well I reckon he committed a worse crime than I did. He had practically served his sentence when I came in and was soon out. His place was then taken by Allan, my relief of a few days previous, who had done something similar but got caught out this time. The Provost Sergeant Slope Hips MacLeod was very good to me and I got to sit at the warm guardroom fire quite often, going back to the freezing cold bare tin cell at night which was, I can assure anyone, not funny. The fourteen days passed and I went to join my section at the pier huts in Tórshavn as they had come back during my absence. I went up to the NAAFI with the boys that evening and had so many pints given to me that I’m sure I could swim in it because for sure I couldn’t drink it.

Sniper Training We spent quite a bit of time at target practice with our rifles, Short Magazine Lee Enfields (SMLE); they were capable of four inch groups at 100 yards. The one I had was an exception. I could knock a cormorant’s head off at 100 yards almost every time and that rifle was in great demand when on the range. When we were issued with sniper’s rifles a chap MacIssac from North Uist got my rifle , exchanging his own for it at the store and shortly after that it broke up one day but no one was hurt. (p43) We had our company shoot before I parted with my SMLE and Donnie Cameron (Glenurquhart and Letterewe) and I tied for first place so shortly after we moved to Toftir, he and I were taken up above the village to the range for a shot out. It was to be short and sharp, ten rounds at a five inch bull at three hundred yards in thirty seconds – with our gas masks on! We loaded up, put on anti-dim on our gas mask eye pieces. I could see that Donnie was shaking quite a bit as we went about preparing to shoot. As I put on my gas mask I shoved the empty bullet clips under the mask on the left side of my chin to ensure that mine would not steam up. We got the order to fire and they left our end pretty quickly and I won as I had nine bulls and an inner. Shortly after that we had a week’s sniping course at Toftir . Duncie Fraser, John Geat MacDonald, Johnnie MacLeod, Jock MacPherson, Johnnie MacPherson Kinlochleven, DJ MacKinnon, DJ MacIssac and Sergeant Jimmy Sutherland. Anthony Wills was in charge of us. Our ammo pouches had pieces of hardboard or plywood in them to keep them nice and square-looking for guard duties. This day we were told to get ready for a route march and to carry fifty rounds of ammunition. Jimmy Sutherland lined us up on the road outside the house we occupied. Tony came along the line from my left and asked Jock MacPherson by my left side if he had his ammunition. Jock got a bit flustered and eventually stuttered out ‘no, sir’. ‘Sergeant Sutherland, put that man on a charge’ said Tony and passed on to me casting a beady eye on my ammo pouches which looked misshapen as my plywood had come apart. ‘Ammo, MacKenzie?’. Quick as a flash I clapped my left pouch with my left hand and said ‘yes, sir’ and the pieces of wood clattered as I struck the pouch. Tony passed to the end of the line eventually. We got the order ‘right turn, quick march’ followed shortly by ‘march at ease’.

(p44) A little way up the road I called Jock a damn fool as I had no ammo either! Poor Jock was speechless’

Second sight One night as we slept in our billet there in Toftir, I woke during the night but fell asleep again and shortly before we woke at 6.30 I had a vivid and clear dream. As Jock and I walked together to the house which our cook used and fed us in, I told Jock about the dream – I had dreamed that a German bomber crossed overhead en route to Tórshavn, which we could not quite see from where we were. The plane had circled above Tórshavn twice from the left to right, then came back in our direction flying at about 2500 feet, dropping two bombs that straddled but did not hit a large ship that lay at anchor in the fjord about a mile out from where we were talking. The ship’s ack-ack had opened up on the plane and the tail gunner had machine gunned the ship after they passed overhead. I even dreamed of the intermittent tracer bullets. We went in and had our breakfast, came out and as we were walking back to our billet everything down to the last detail happened, as I dreamed and had told Jock about on our way to breakfast!

The Trawlermen While we were in Klagsvig, Aberdeen and Hull trawlers used to call on their way to the fishing ground, especially in bad weather. We used to be on pier guard and were often asked down in the evening for a tot of rum. As we had a small canteen for beer and cigarettes of our own in our billets in the gymnasium, they sometimes came up for a pint. One night Neil Campbell, the ex-boxer, was on pier guard and somehow his rifle fell over the side of the jetty to which the trawlers were tied up. It was fished out a few days later by hooks and line. One evening as I was on guard an elderly fisherman came off one trawler and was making his way towards his own boat and in the execution of a sailor’s hornpipe fell (p45) off the jetty into the sea. He could swim and was promptly pulled out. The whole crew of a Hull trawler came up to our canteen one afternoon, had a couple of pints of our beer and left, went straight out to sea and a couple of hours later their accompanying boat returned to say that they had struck a mine, only a flash and nothing left. The ones who turned back were very distressed as they all lived near each other in Hull. The fjord at Klagsvig is long and less than a half mile wide. One night three of our chaps had a few pints and walked quite a bit down to the village. They could see the houses across the water so close and decided it was too far to walk back round the head of the fjord so got into a small boat, cast the rope off, sat down and started to row. After quite some time they didn’t seem to be getting any nearer the lights on the other side. One of them shook himself and had a look and found that the boat was still tied to the jetty!

Near Mutiny On another occasion there was a section of us based in Fuglafjørður for ten days. We were patrolling the hills in that area. There was a corporal, in charge of us who used to parade us for inspection most mornings., especially if he had been drinking with some locals the previous night. One day as we lined up for inspection and he walked along the rank, all eight of us, he put one of the chaps on a punishment for not having shaved that morning. The punishment was one hour’s pack drill , at the double, every evening for a week . On the night before our departure as we lay sleeping on the floor of our billet, a small hall, the corporal came in drunk at 1.30am, kicked us all out of bed and made us roll our blankets in bundles of ten on which we had to sit until 7am at which time we departed by boat to Tórshavn. (p46) Some time later our company was back in Suðuroy for a spell of duty. This evening some of our chaps had just come back from leave and we had all gone to our beds, or most of us had, in the loft of a fish store shed when up the stairs came the same corporal with the pass book in his hand. He cursed and swore at us and said ‘you’re only a shower of bastards – the Faroe men are far better than you are’. I can still see a small Glasgow chap who had just come off leave that day, sit up in bed and say in tears, ‘did you hear what he said about us?’ A chap, Allan Campbell, jumped out of bed in his shirt tails and smacked our favourite corporal a beauty on the nose. He had the pass book in his hand and within seconds it was red with blood from the belted nose. Quite a noise arose and he was threatened to be thrown down the stairs. When the short , straight, wiry hair of Sergeant Martin appeared followed by the figure of Lieutenenat Wooton, the Orderly Officer, they shouted for order and asked what was up. They got no hearing, whatsoever, to their enquiries but were told to get down the blanckety blank stairs or they would be thrown down. They took the corporal and his useless pass book with them and went.

Fieldcraft and stalking For a time one winter we had night patrol exercises. Two men were positioned guarding a lit hurricane lamp across a valley and in pairs we had to try to capture the lit lamp without being seen. It was very difficult as once you got near you were very easily spotted in the light. When my turn came I got quite close by crawling the last bit and throwing a couple of stones in the other direction which distracted the guards; then I ran in and as I grabbed the lantern I could see this big fellow running for me. But as soon as I griped the lamp I smashed it against a rock and escaped with it in the darkness. (p47) Major Anthony Wills took our platoon up the B- road behind Tórshavn one afternoon for some observation and field craft exercises. We all sat on a knoll looking back down to the town. He had, or had almost, hidden various items of equipment in front of us blended into the bushes and local landscape. We soon picked out all the objects, especially those of us who were snipers in the platoon as we had telescopes. He then sent Alick MacRae Kishorn and me walking down the road for about 1 1/4 miles to the outskirts of the town. The object was to see how close we could get to the boys on the knoll without being seen or spotted. Once we got to our destination, we disappeared behind a wall and started on our stalk. Luckily for us there was a hollow or two up which we could make good headway. In one place we had to go below a bridge on the B-road. The bridge was fairly low and as I stooped to get under it, I belted my head just at my cap badge against the arch of the stone bridge. The dent is in my badge to this day. We got right up close to where they sat or stood looking for signs of us. We then skirted round the knoll to the right, came up behind them and it gave me the greatest feeling of satisfaction I ever had when I saw the expression on Tony’s face as he turned round when I put my hand on his shoulder.

Faroe peoples The Faroe people treated us with the greatest kindness. We always got on well with them and had a smattering of the language. Some of our chaps married Faroe girls while we were there and others after the war. In fact two ex-Scouts live there with their families today. I became friendly with a girl in Tórshavn while we were there and used to go walking with her in the town in the evenings. On one occasion she turned up, or so I thought, at the appointed place and time but when I said, ‘hello, where shall we go this evening?, she replied, ‘nowhere. I came to tell you that my sister can’t come tonight as she’s in bed with the mumps’. This was her identical twin!. I’ve never seen two people so alike. The fact that we were there when Dunkirk took place and that we felt so isolated not knowing if we were ever going to have ago at the enemy, seemed to make us unsettled. However, it was an experience that no ex-Lovat Scout will ever forget. A few years ago a party of ex-Scouts and some wives went out to visit the Faroes for a week. We could not have been made more welcome anywhere. We were treated really honourably, made welcome in all their homes and toured most of the islands during our short stay. The chap Bjarni and Asla Husgard in whose house my wife and I stayed were the essence of hospitality, joy and love as was their family Maria, Johanna and Trosdein. During the war Bjarni as a boy of seven years used to march for a bit with the Scouts when they went on exercise at Strendur where he then lived. When we arrived at Tórshavn we were met at the pier by crowds of people and the evening we left, as we marched from the bookshop to the ship we were followed and cheered away by hundreds. It made us very proud to be so highly thought of by such lovely people.

(P49) We left the Faroes in May 1942on the Loch Garry. Though we moaned and complained during our stay it was with heavy hearts that we boarded ship.

Nairn

Next day we landed at Invergordon and boarded a train which took us to Nairn [12th June 1942 - Melville]. Our billet was the Golf Links Hotel. Again fitness got priority and each morning we were up at 6.30 and taken for a run on the sand and then into the sea. We hated this but after a few days got hardened to it. We got disembarkation leave, home for a couple of weeks which was great. The leave soon passed and we went back to Nairn and our training with emphasis on fitness. One evening there were four of us sitting on a bench near by the music-stand close to the swimming pool watching some planes flying out from Tain Drome and spinning about over the sea. They were climbing up and diving down again in mock battle. Suddenly as one of them dived and we were all watching it and could not or did not get a chance to speak. It went straight into the sea sending up a fountain of water up in the air.

Halkirk, Caithness After a few weeks there we were taken by train up to Halkirk in Caithness [late July 1942-Melville]. We were billeted near Braal Castle in Nissen huts. Again we were given plenty of exercise by route marches and cross-country runs. I got very keen on running and used to pace a Glasgow chap named Ken Milligan who was a very good distance runner who had trained with Sydney Wooderson pre-war [Sydney Wooderson MBE English middle distance athlete- held world record for the mile at 4m 6.4s in London 1938 - Whitaker]. We used to run in shorts and our singlets. One forenoon when I came in from a punishing cross-country I wrung my singlet on the billet floor. During one of our runs Milligan dropped a stone on his foot and was unable to run for some time after that. During his lay-off, on our sports day I got second for the 100 yards, first in the 220, 440 and 880 yards and the mile. We used to go for a (p50) pint to the bar in Halkirk and there was a local character who was always playing his fiddle. We had cross country runs against the HLI, Seaforths and Black Watch who were all stationed in the North, I suppose because of its invulnerability. We nearly always beat them. We used to have our shooting practice at Dorrery which was away to the west, miles out on the moors. I had at that time a .303 P14 rifle to which I had a telescopic sight fitted, (bought pre-war in an Edinburgh pawn-shop for 30 shillings). On our course I had only dropped two points from 100 to 500m yards. The cross-wind was so that at 500 yards I put the pointer of the scope on the edge of the six foot target and got five bulls!

Helmsdale, Sutherland There was a battle school for officers and sergeants started up at Salscraggie Lodge, three miles up the glen from Helmsdale. I was one of the eight chosen from the Battalion to represent the Lovat Scout section in the demonstration platoon. It was good fun but pretty tough going. For a while we lived in the empty lodge, sleeping on the floor but eventually we, the demonstration platoon, were billeted in bell tents by the Lodge. The weather was mainly very good summer weather with the result that the adders were very numerous and we would lift up the floor boards of our tents every evening to kill the adders that came under our tents in order to get in the cool shade. Sometimes as we stood on parade on the road we were able to kill them with the butt of our rifles as they slithered across the road. As the day got shorter and the weather worsened we were moved down to a church by the glen road, near the Bridge Hotel. Those on the course were subjected to pretty tough training under battle conditions. We fired Bren guns on fixed lines over them as they crawled up a shallow trench 100 yards away and many of them had (p51) holes in their packs and mess-tins by not keeping their bellies low on the ground. At night they would be sent out to attack the Lodge and we were lying in pairs armed with toggle ropes waiting for them. We could see them coming, silhouetted against the sky as we lay in the heather . We’d stretch the rope between us and when they struck it we pulled them off their feet and then jumped on them to keep them quiet. We never harmed them otherwise but some were dead scared, in fact struck dumb. We paraded one morning knowing that we were going on a four-day scheme and as we were preparing to leave we enquired about haversack rations. We were told to report to the cook-house where we each received about two pounds of oatmeal and one pound of sugar. When we enquired about bread etc we were told that was it – get lost. We had run-ins and varied brush-ins with our course party during the four days as we were on the go most of the time, getting the odd snatch of sleep under our gas capes, usually in a ditch if there was not too much water in it. At the end of the fourth day I can’t remember exactly where we were but we were many miles from base and we had to walk back. It finished up that the Scout section were carrying the Bren guns of the Seaforths and Black Watch sections as well as their own and also some of their equipment as well. Two of our section, Danny Campbell and Jimmy MacLean had a brush with two local hard men one night in one of the bars. It came to blows and one of the locals got a broken nose, the other a broken jaw. Danny died a few years after hostilities ceased and Jimmy was killed in Italy. One of the Seaforth (5th Battalion) sergeants while crossing the river Helmsdale on an exercise one day, while the river was in spate, happened to put his foot on top of a thunderflash which was thrown in along with dozens of others a (p52) a short distance up-stream from where they were crossing. It exploded under water and shattered his foot. On land they were practically harmless when they exploded and nobody hardly got injured by them. He was taken to hospital at Golspie where he had to undergo an operation on his foot. He never came out of the anaesthetic and a post mortem showed how he died - he had water in his lungs when he fell into the river as his foot got damaged. He belonged to Thurso and was a brother of Magnus Sutherland who, when my father retired from Achnashellach, took over the house we had lived in since 1927.

Thurso, Caithness While we were at Helmsdale the battalion moved up from Halkirk to Castleton just outside Thurso and some weeks later we joined up with them there. Shortly after that they formed D Company by taking so many men from A, B and C companies. D company also included a fair number of new chaps who had joined us from other regiments. I was one of those drafted from B to D company. We had several route marches and schemes from there and also two weeks leave. On one of the schemes in which I took part and finished when we were not far from Castleton, one of our Bren gunners laid his gun in a 15cwt truck which accompanied us with stores. He was at once spotted by Major Campbell-Orde (who had me for smoking in the black-out in Faroe) and our Bren gunner got charged and confined to barracks. One evening as we walked from Thurso back across the river to Castleton we saw a returning bomber come down in Thurso bay. The four crew members clambered out on to the wings and were quickly picked up by a fairly fast rescue launch. On several Sundays we were sent out on fatigue parties to dig a telephone cable (p53) up at John O’Groats and were paid 3 shillings a day. We worked alongside the contractors men who got 3 shillings an hour and we worked as well as they did!

Glen Clunie, Braemar Our next move was down to Glen Clunie near Braemar where we were encamped by the river for a few weeks. The food was pretty bad at that stage and we used to have rabbits to help keep the wolf from the door. Jimmy Sutherland ex-C company, Rod Matheson North Uist ex-B Company and I went off up towards the famous Devil’s Elbow area at the head of the glen where we spied some stag in late July. I used my P14 and we took home the heaviest hindquarter I ever had a shot at carrying on my shoulders. It didn’t get time to even cool properly before we had a feed of it and soon after that we were running at both ends! During my short stay there I was detailed to go to Invercauld one day as ghillie to carry the rifle of Cpl Dahl MacLennan Cannich who was to be the gentleman that day. The pony man was Hugh Falconer from Sutherland. We all had experience of the work involved before. We went up Glen Muick close by Lochnagar and eventually the bearded old stalker on whose beat we were got close enough for Dahl to have a shot. He killed a small stag of about ten stones weight – quite a feat as I am sure there were fifteen to eighteen hundred deer in the herd. We loaded the stag on the old chap’s pony, his name was Donald. When Hugh Falconer went to move off with the loaded pony, it jibbed and began to dance and crowding the ghillies’ heels and feet until, at last Hugh lost his grip on the very short piece of rope by which Donald was held. He ran down hill for a couple of hundred yards flat out and then ran round in a wide circle on a flat piece of ground bucking and kicking eventually (p54) to partially dislodge the stag. Then we saw him disappear over a lower ridge going flat out with the stag flapping about. The old stalker was running around with his cap in his hand shouting ‘Donald, Donald’ as loud as he could. When we ran down to where Donald had disappeared from our sight, we saw him three hundred yards further on, up to his neck in a peat bog and when we got up to him he was blowing like an old bellows. We loosed the stag and dragged it to hard ground. There was hardly a whole bone in it’s body. Even the antlers were smashed. No way would the old stalker allow us to put the stag back on Donald as we wanted to do so I don’t expect Donald ever carried another one off the hill. It was during our stay in Glen Clunie that Sunday church parades became voluntary and we had just got a new Regimental Sergeant Major with a voice like a fog horn. He came round to all our tents and when he saw that many weren’t getting ready for church parade, he more or less kicked everyone to parade on the road. We fell in, in ranks of three, and he started to march the whole column up and down the road. Each time we got the order to about turn he let us go further to either side of him. Eventually it was suggested by one of the chaps in the middle of the parade of about 200 to 300 men, that from him forward when the next order came they should play deaf and carry on. The order came and it was really funny to see the nearer half about turn and the front half keep on marching and swinging their arms. The RSM I’m sure almost had a fit. He was certainly about fit to be tied and I think sent a chap on a bicycle to turn (p55) the boys back.

North Wales - Llanberis, and Bangor Major Tony Wills went down to Llanberis in North Wales and shortly after that there was about a dozen of us sent down to help in starting the Army Sniping School [early October - Melville]. There were Sergeants Alex Ross, Willie MacDonald, Archie Martin and JA MacLeod, Lance Corporal Johnnie MacLeod (later killed), Dunkie Fraser, Oxo MacKay, Willie Corrie MacKay, John Geats MacDonald (later killed) and myself. We really enjoyed our stay there as we loved that type of work and as we were all good shots and got great fun out of trying to beat each other. When we got the range constructed and working we were moved back to our battalion in Bangor. Each Sunday while in Llanberis we walked up the mountain railway to the top of Snowdon and back in time for lunch. There was a tiny box-type café by the side of the rail track and one Sunday as we came down it happened to be open. We each had a cup of tea and one slice of Swiss roll which cost us 2/6 [12 1/2p], pretty expensive as our pay was only 30/- [£1.50] a week. Occasionally, we would go into Caernarvon on a Saturday afternoon and go to the pictures or have a walk about the town. It was full of Yanks at that time. We did not mix with them as they were rather loud and had lots more money than we had. Close by the range at Llanberis, there was a small pub where we would go at lunch time for a pint to wash down our pretty dry piece. The owner had a liver and white spaniel dog, Bougo, who took a shine to us and followed us about most of the time. Oxo used to give the dog the first go at his pint and when Bougo’s nose couldn’t get further into the glass, he would down it himself and repeat the performance. I’m sure that dog was alcoholic befo