The Forgotten Highlander

by Alistair Urquhart

  With a sinking feeling I looked at the letter again and again. But there was no mistake and no opting out. Far from being the last to be called up, I was one of the first. Suddenly the realisation hit me: ‘I will lose my job!’

  Since the age of fourteen I had been working at Lawson Turnbull, plumbers’ merchants and electrical wholesalers, which stretched along most of Mealmarket Street in central Aberdeen. Previously I had attended Robert Gordon College, a well-known and prestigious grammar school, along with my brother Douglas, who was eighteen months my senior.

  When my father’s income fell our parents could not afford to keep us both in study. I had a two-year bursary but when that ran out the family simply could not pay for me to attend school. To help my mother out I had to get a job and quickly. I applied for several positions and within a fortnight, even though I was shy of my fifteenth birthday and still wearing short trousers, Mr Grassie took me on as an office boy. I was so proud. Ignoring all of the usual distractions I raced home in exultation to tell Mum the good news. I was elated to start work at a wage of 5/- (25p) per week. The hours were long, 8 a.m. till 5.30 p.m. Monday to Friday, and included Saturdays till 1 p.m.; on Christmas Days we were allowed to go home at 3 p.m. But I was thrilled. It was a good job with the possibility of advancement. And I would be contributing financially at home.

  To begin with I never had any one special role in the company. I just did what was required. One day I would be packing crates bound for Wick in the far north of Scotland and on the next my puny teenage arms would be hoisting cast-iron baths on to the back of flatbed trucks. I really enjoyed it apart from the cold. There was no heating in the wide-open warehouse and you still had to wear a collar and tie. I had to buy my own company coat and I would wear my collar and tie over the top. It looked ridiculous but it was better than freezing to death. I also used to stuff straw in my boots, which worked amazingly well.

  The bosses believed that every employee should start at the bottom, in the dust. Those who showed any particular potential or aptitude were given the chance to learn each facet of the business, which was wide and varied. One day, after a couple of years running office errands, I was called into the managing director’s office. Full of apprehension and fearful of losing my job (something that was a sin in those days), I gingerly entered the office to be told the amazing news that I was to be offered the job of trainee warehouseman with a wage of fifteen shillings a week. Promoted upstairs to the showroom my first task was wiring and hanging electric light fittings throughout the front room. I worked in the showroom for a year serving customers who came in off the street. I really enjoyed serving the public. I sold them bathroom suites, shower cubicles, light fittings and lamps. We also had a wide selection of Royal Doulton chinaware and were renowned in Aberdeen for being cheaper than the rival shops because of our connections with their bathroom people. After a while they had me making up bathroom suites and partitions myself, so I got to become a joiner as well. After learning the ropes in the showroom I worked in the electrical department for six months. There was so much to learn. Luckily my immediate boss Sandy Anderson knew the trade backwards so I watched and listened, and soaked it all in.

  There were no tea breaks and I got an hour for lunch. Most men would bring flasks to work but with no canteen area in which to take lunch communally I preferred to go home. At the lunchtime whistle I would race home on my bike. Mum would have a bowl of steaming-hot soup ready for me to devour, along with an Aberdeen ‘rowie’, the local savoury bread roll made with so much salt and butter that folk sometimes called them ‘butteries’. Then I would pedal back to work, avoiding the speeding trams and not even stopping to watch the hurdy-gurdy man, whose organ and dancing monkey had entertained and mesmerised me for hours as a schoolboy. It was a bit Dickensian but we were just so grateful to have a job.

  So it was with some trepidation that I approached conscription. I loved my job and did everything I could to keep it. Around Aberdeen in those days there was not a lot of employment. The shipyards, textile factories and paper mills had all been badly hit by the Depression and we lived in constant fear of becoming ‘idle’. Knots of men, desolate and dejected, gathered at the street corners. The men who had beaten the Kaiser were defeated now – by unemployment. And we were all desperate to avoid their fate.

  I was under the impression that the government had given some sort of order to the effect that jobs would be kept for men when they returned from war but these assurances all seemed very vague. There had been terrific scandals after the Great War when men, including police officers, returned home to find that promised jobs had gone. Mr Grassie, however, was adamant that his men would have jobs to return home to. He was a veteran of the 1914 – 18 war and it was important to him that ‘his boys’ go to war. It was equally important that their jobs were kept for them when they came home and he was very sincere in his determination to do this for us.

  I had only four days to prepare myself for basic training. In that period my stomach churned and I shook a bit! I had not left home before and the prospect of joining up was very intimidating. In fact the furthest I had travelled was eighty miles south to Dundee, where my grandparents lived. I did not know it at the time but I would not even be allowed out of the barracks for the first six weeks of basic training.

  Finally the day of departure dawned. My work colleagues had already wished me well, with some of the older men, veterans of the First World War, offering the sage advice, ‘Remember, Alistair. Keep your heid doon.’ On my last day at work Mr Grassie even shook my hand – for the first time in the six years I had worked for him.

  At home Rhoda, Bill and Doug stood back, white-faced and cowed by the sudden emotion of my leaving. The adults knew the reality of war. There were lots of tears from Mum, and Auntie Dossie was inconsolable. They had lost their brother Will at the Somme and my departure brought back terrible memories. Mum sobbed quietly but Auntie Dossie cried uncontrollably and clutched at my arm.

  ‘Don’t go! Don’t go!’ she pleaded. ‘Oh Alistair, stay a wee while longer.’ It was an awful moment and, try as I might, I could not stop the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  ‘I’ll be all right, I’ll be OK,’ I replied. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon.’

  Then Father intervened and shook my hand manfully, making me promise that I would ‘look after myself’. As ever he controlled his emotions and overcame whatever dreadful memories he had of earlier partings for the Great War. Doug stepped forward and imitated Dad, shaking my hand firmly. At last I wrenched myself free, swung my rucksack on my back and headed for the tram to the Bridge of Don barracks.

  The Gordons had lost nine thousand men in the First World War and suffered a further twenty thousand casualties. Every family in the north-east of Scotland had been affected. Now I was taking the same road my father had taken all those years before. His journey had led him straight to the gates of hell, to the Battle of the Somme, where Britain’s ‘pals’ battalions were decimated and the army suffered sixty thousand casualties on the first day. I could not help wondering what the future held in store for me. But Dad did not offer any advice. He knew by then that I was self-reliant and that I would tackle this challenge in the same head-on manner that I had everything else.

  When I got to the main gates of the Bridge of Don barracks I gritted my teeth and strode purposefully through without looking back. I put the tearful departure from home to the back of my mind and reported straight to the guardroom. A sentry volunteered to take me to the looming stone barracks. It was the coldest place imaginable, a stone’s throw from the North Sea and further north than Moscow. In the centre of the vast barracks room, which I was to share with twenty-seven other equally nervous young men, sat a dismally unlit iron stove.

  As I was to find out, we would be given a weekly fuel allowance of coal and when it ran out that was it. The only warm place was the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) canteen, which also sold beer, cigarettes, tea and coffee. I would occasi
onally relax in there to get some heat but I was not a drinker or a smoker. In fact at the age of twenty I still had not even touched a drop of liquor.

  I had been one of the first to arrive in the barracks. Men continued to trickle in as we took stock of our new home and put together the iron bed frames. We were a mixed bunch, made up of farm-workers, servants, labourers, fishermen, apprentice engineers and plumbers. There were no university students or graduates. We were rough and ready. Perhaps that was why we had been selected in the first draft, the expendable? The atmosphere between everyone was a little strained to begin with. There was a lot of grumbling at lives suddenly being turned upside down and becoming regimented, and no gung-ho euphoria about fighting for King and Country. We were quiet and subdued, apprehensive and waiting for something to happen.

  On that first day we were issued with our kit at the quartermaster’s store. Rough blankets, kit bag, toiletries, toothbrush, uniform, fatigues, boots, socks, underwear, cap, overcoat and a gas mask were all shoved into our grasp. Rifles came later. Some of the kit was new but most of it was very much second-hand. The uniforms were illfitting and faded, the gear rusted and tired.

  After a restless first night we sprang out of bed for roll-call at 6 a.m. and gathered outside on the parade ground for physical training, or PT as it would become known. After energetic exercises on the spot, jumping up and down, and a run around the barracks square, I discovered somewhat to my surprise just how fit I was compared with the others.

  I had always been very sporting. From an early age I represented my primary school at football, playing other schools on Saturday mornings and for the Cub Scouts in the afternoons. When I went to grammar school I took up swimming, rugby, cricket and athletics. On Saturdays I played rugby for the school colts in the morning, football for the Scouts in the afternoon, before gymnastics with the Scouts in the evening. I could not have fitted much more in if I had tried but I never thought anything of it.

  Sunday mornings were spent at Aberdeen swimming pool, a salt-water pool down at the seafront. I was a member of the Bon Accord Swimming Club and no matter what the weather was like I would be there every Sunday at 6 a.m., shivering and keen to get stuck in. An excellent coach put us through our paces, all the swim strokes, except the butterfly, which was not even thought about at that time. I managed to complete my life-saving badge – and later all the swimming lessons really would be a ‘lifesaver’.

  After a Sunday morning doing lengths in the icy water I would cycle back home and make breakfast for my mother and father, who were still in bed. I would cheerfully serve them ham and eggs with fried bread and tomatoes.

  Sport and Boy Scout activities took up most of my weekends. I had joined the Cubs when I was seven and then graduated to Scouts, managing to gain my King’s Scout Badge. I took it seriously and was very proud when in 1935 our patrol won the coveted Baden Powell Flag as best troop, in competition with the rest of the Aberdeen Scout groups.

  When I left school to start my working career I could not participate with the Scouts as much as I had previously but I still went to meetings on Friday nights and kept up football with them on Saturday afternoons. And I persisted with the summer camping trips, which were always a highlight of the year. We went to spots across Aberdeenshire and quite often down the coast to Montrose in Angus, a favourite for me because the town hall held a dance on Saturday nights. By that time dancing had become a major part of my life.

  When I was aged six my parents dragged me off to Highland dancing classes. Reluctant at first, I came to enjoy it and progressed to tap dancing. These classes lasted until I was sixteen, when I thought about getting into ballroom dancing. I hadn’t been in a proper dance hall and wanted to know what I was doing before I went and made a fool of myself. Despite the steep cost of 2/6d (12.5p) for ballroom dance classes, which accounted for around a third of my weekly wage, I bit the bullet and went for it. On Saturday afternoons I cycled to a dance studio in Bridge Street, where the classes were led by Mr J. L. McKenzie, a first-rate professional dancer. He taught waltz, Highland and dance hall steps. He was also a very good ballroom teacher. I threw myself into it and quickly became quite proficient.

  My best pal, Eric Bissett, who worked alongside me at the plumbers’ merchants, was one of the few of us who had a girlfriend. But when we went out on Saturday nights Eric and his gal always struggled with the dances and the various steps. After much pestering I relented and offered them some free tuition, asking my parents if we could use our living room as an impromptu dance studio. Dad did not approve but Mum was in favour and won the battle. She always had the final say over Father in such matters. So Eric, his girlfriend and a few other pals would come round to the house on Thursday nights for lessons. We would clear the living room, pushing the furniture to the walls, and I would teach them all to dance. After that we were always out together dancing.

  The first time I went to a dance hall was a magical experience. The place was a fantastic, glittering palace with hundreds of young men and women queuing to get in. Inside, the girls were on one side of the hall and the boys were on the other side. We would all be eyeing each other up, with the boys working up the courage to cross the floor to ask for a dance. Quite often you got beaten to the girl of your choice and there would be a spat. After a while I got the hang of it and started to book dance partners. I would give a girl a dance and then ask her for the next slow dance or quickstep. If she agreed and someone else later asked her for that dance, she would politely decline and say she was already booked. I always went for the ones that I knew could dance.

  The Palais de Dance was a very popular venue on Diamond Street in Aberdeen. It was a picturesque granite building purpose-built as a dance hall, with a proper floor, seating all round the edges and a balcony that served tea and coffee. It was the posh place to go, with a higher admission price and a middle-class clientele. It did not sell alcohol but most of us were teenagers or just in our early twenties anyway and we did not care for the stuff. Some of the working men would go to the pub first and then go to the dance but it was frowned upon and girls would often refuse to dance with men if they could smell liquor on their breath. If the men complained, they were thrown out.

  The Palais was a happening place to be and had a great house band but my favourite venue was the Beach Ballroom on the promenade. It was a much bigger place than the Palais de Dance and the floor was sprung on chains. You could dance all night and not get tired. It was also more working-class and I felt more at home. Dances would start at seven-thirty or eight in the evening and I would usually meet my friends there. I would always say to the girls that I would see them inside – it was a polite way of saying, ‘I’m not paying your admission fee!’

  On Friday and Saturday nights there would be a live band at the Ballroom. Since it was such a big venue the operators managed to attract all the big dance bands of the day, including Joe Loss, Oscar Rabin, and Henry Hall and his famous BBC band. If Joe Loss played the Ballroom on a Friday night, he would give a concert on Sunday night. The Ballroom would be filled with rows of chairs and he would play light opera and Gershwin. It was fantastic to see the top acts of the day in my hometown playing music made especially for ballroom dancing. Victor Silvester, a professional dance teacher from London, had his own band and took many tunes of the day and put them to the tempo of the fox-trot and rumba. My favourite dance was the slow fox-trot. Everyone tells me that it is the most difficult but I always found it very easy and girls would line up to dance it with me.

  The dances would usually finish at 10.30 p.m. On Fridays they would have late dances, which would last until one in the morning. I had no problem dancing all night and would never sit out a dance. I would dance in my suit and never take off my jacket or tie.

  If I had the money, I would sometimes take a girl I had met at the dances to the pictures. Everyone who took girls would try and sit in the back row, in the chummy seats. There was one girl, Hazel Watson, whom I danced with most. I was always tryin
g to pluck up the courage to ask her out. She was a couple of years younger than me. Hazel was a beautiful blonde with sparkling blue eyes and she just loved to dance. She was one of the few that could keep up with me and I got to know her very well. She worked at the paper mill, ‘using her fingers’, and my group of friends would often meet up with her group on Sundays.

  On Sunday afternoons Eric, myself and two other pals, Bob, a shipyard worker, and Alec, a shop clerk, would go to Duthie Park. Sometimes a trio would be playing in the Winter Gardens there and we would meet the girls we had danced with the previous night.

  On Sunday nights we would go to Union Street and walk ‘The Mat’, a promenade route that took us from Holburn Junction down towards the sea to stop at Market Street, and back up again. There would be hundreds of young people doing the same thing, boys walking one way, girls coming back up the other. We would go up and down four or five times an evening, stopping in shop doorways to talk to bunches of girls whom we knew from the dancing.

  My main interest in girls was whether they could dance or not. I rarely had any money to take them out anyway, so I stuck to work, dancing, sport and Scouts. Sadly there were no girlfriends for me. Nonetheless it was a happy time.

  Far away dark clouds were gathering. Even in remote Aberdeen there were ominous portents, with local men volunteering to fight against Franco in Spain and violent clashes in the streets when Sir Oswald Mosley’s blackshirted fascists came to town.

  When I got into the Army and basic training at Bridge of Don I was super-fit and without doubt the fittest man in my regiment. On the obstacle course I was always way ahead of the pack. If there was a quicker way of doing things, I always found it.