The Forgotten Highlander

by Alistair Urquhart

  The respite was brief and after five pleasant days we were ready to sail back to the United Kingdom on 12 November on the Queen Mary, once a luxury liner, now converted into a less than luxurious troop ship. It had once carried British Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic for crunch talks with fellow allied forces officials. When we boarded at New York it was crammed with hundreds if not thousands of other soldiers all gleefully bound on the last leg across the Atlantic for home.

  Five days at sea, sleeping on the floor of a former lounge, unable to move about because of the sheer volume of passengers, I was glad to enter Southampton harbour. We had been well looked after, with exceptional care taken to provide us with the best food. But I was probably one of the poorest eaters on board. I still couldn’t face eating anything substantial and stuck to bowls of cold custard or soup. To watch others gorge themselves made me nauseous.

  I had been counting the hours. The thought of arriving home was mind-boggling to me. It felt like visiting a strange land for the first time, one I had only read about in books. It was like when you go on holiday to somewhere new and you know it won’t resemble the picture you’ve built up in your mind, but that is all you have to go with so you succumb to it. That is how I felt, and I tried to limit my expectations and shun thoughts of what I would do once I got back to Aberdeen. I banished thoughts of gaining new employment and readjusting to society.

  Despite my low expectations nothing could have prepared me for the disappointment of arriving in dismal Southampton. No quayside band, no media or fanfare awaited us. And most importantly, no family. I had fully expected to see Mum and Dad, Auntie Dossie, maybe even Bill and Rhoda, but there was nobody, just a handful of industrious dockworkers. All of the men felt devastated, as if a light had been snuffed out in our souls.

  Feelings of disappointment, irritation and dread of travelling to the north of Scotland by train outweighed any anger on my behalf. That would come later though, when I fully realised how disgracefully the British government was treating its returning heroes. Despite dying in our thousands, sacrificing honest, hard-working and ordinary lives for the greater good, liberty and justice, we found they shunned us, forgot about us, brushed us under the political carpet. I was sure that my threemonth journey home by the most circuitous route had been a deliberate political ploy by the government. I felt that they wanted us to recuperate on the way home to shield the British public from the state we were in and allow for the development of future good trading relations with Japan.

  I sent a cable home from Southampton rail station saying, ‘Home tomorrow’, and obtained a rail warrant. I caught a commuter train to London, where I hopped off at Victoria Station. Disorientated and bewildered I bungled my way across London asking strangers for directions to King’s Cross, where my last train awaited.

  At King’s Cross Station a couple of military police officers accosted me. ‘Are you going to Aberdeen, lad?’ one of them asked in a cockney accent. He must have heard me asking for my ticket.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Come with me.’

  Wondering what I had done wrong this time, I followed him to an office. A ghostly-looking chap sat on a chair rocking back and forth in front of a paper-strewn desk. He looked up at me and said bleakly, ‘They’re out to get me.’

  I looked at the Red Caps, who shrugged. Not caring that the poor chap could hear them they told me he was ‘away with the fairies’. He had been a regular in the Gordons and had been captured in Singapore. He was a complete wreck and had obviously suffered horrendously at the hands of the Japanese but all they could elicit from him was that his name was Hugh and he was from Inverurie in Aberdeenshire. Despite the fact that he was extremely depressed and mentally ill they put me in charge of him for the journey home, with strict instructions not to let him out of sight and to hand him over to some Red Caps at Aberdeen Station. I reluctantly agreed, thinking that it would at least keep my mind off other things.

  We got a second-class seat and I plonked him by the window, hoping the passing countryside would placate him. He had a wild look in his eyes and jabbered nonsense constantly. I had the feeling that he could become aggressive at any time so I treated him good-naturedly and tried to calm him with soothing words.

  The journey was a nightmare. Hugh was a handful and I spent most of my time apologising to others for his loud outbursts, which were frequent and disturbing. Seeing him in that state really got to me. I prayed that I wouldn’t descend back down the same dark path.

  I tried to convince him that he was back in Britain and would be safe now. Nobody was coming to get him. As we pulled into Aberdeen Joint Station at 6 a.m. on 18 November 1945, I told him to look out the window, hoping he would recognise the view as we crossed the River Dee. I left him with the Red Caps in much the same state as when I first met him, bidding him farewell and wishing him luck, though I’m not sure he heard.

  Once I knew Hugh was safely in their hands I ventured to the main entrance, where I knew the family would be waiting. I spotted Mum first, her distinctive hair and height gave her away. I walked up to Mum, Dad, Dossie, Rhoda and a young chap I didn’t recognise. I hugged Mum and I shall never forget the look in her eyes. She was so shocked and upset, probably by my skin-and-bone appearance and lack of hair. I hugged Dossie, Dad and Rhoda and the tears could no longer be held back. Both my mother and father had aged far beyond their years. My ordeal had taken a toll on them as well as myself.

  I turned to the young chap and said, ‘Are you Rhoda’s boyfriend?’

  Eyebrows raised, he said, ‘No, you bloody fool! I am your brother Bill.’

  It just went to show what six years of war could do – to him and me. Also there was Doug’s new wife Cicely, from Oxfordshire, and she introduced me to their new baby boy born just a few months before. They had named him Alistair in my honour. Then it emerged that they had all thought I had been killed. None of the half-dozen cards or so that I had sent from the camps had ever arrived in Aberdeen. I was back from the dead.

  On the tram journey home to Seafield Drive I asked where Douglas was. They told me that he was ‘abroad’ working for the Foreign Office but nobody had heard from him in months. He had been in the Army’s glider regiment. He had broken both of his ankles during a mission into occupied France and reinvented himself as a war correspondent in the Middle East. Before the war he could speak French and German from his school days and had subsequently learned four more languages, which suited the Foreign Office, and they had signed him up. I wouldn’t see him again until the following Christmas, when he returned as a shattered wreck, barely alive, looking as if he himself had been a POW and confined to the black hole for several months. He had disappeared on some cloak and dagger mission, abandoning his new wife and baby boy for more than a year. On his bizarre return he refused to tell anybody where he had been and was very nearly a broken man.

  So by the time we reached home I was already feeling panicky. Everyone had so many questions; sometimes it felt as if they were all asking at once. This was not how I had thought I would feel on my homecoming. So much had changed. Mum had prepared a lavish breakfast for my return and the table was laid out when we got back home shortly after 7 a.m. We sat down for a family meal with everyone on their best behaviour – even Father was keen to dote on me. Mum served up tattie scones, sausages, eggs, the real works. But despite much encouragement and insistence I could only pick at my food. I asked about Hazel and without looking at me Mum said she had married during the war and moved to Canada. I was not upset; in fact I was glad that she had moved on and seemed happy.

  Then Mum cleared her throat and told me nervously, ‘You should also know, Alistair, that your friend Eric didn’t make it.’

  I felt ill. I could barely lift my head and the conversation buzzed around me. The words became jumbled and I could no longer make them out, as the kitchen walls seemed to close in. It was like a bout of cholera, the claustrophobia enhanced by the cramped kitchen and the desperate
shows of love and affection my poor family poured on me.

  ‘He was killed on his first mission over Europe,’ Dad said. ‘He was a rear gunner, a real brave soul.’

  It was all too much, yet another kick in the face. Even though I had been around so much death, lived it and breathed it, nothing prepared me for the loss of such a close friend. All I could think was, Why then am I still alive? By what miracle had I returned home? Suddenly I snapped. I slammed my fork down on Mum’s finest crockery plate and stood up, the chair screeching on the wooden floor. The room fell silent. It was so unlike me to make a scene, completely out of character. I knew they were trying to help but I just couldn’t stand it.

  ‘I’m going out,’ I announced. I was already half out the door when a chorus of ‘I’ll come with you’ and ‘Come back, Alistair’ rang out.

  But I was off. I needed to be alone. My head felt like it was going to pop and fresh air seemed the only answer.

  I walked and walked. Past the Co-op and up Auchinyell Brae, I hardly broke stride. Before long I was miles from home, walking with purpose but without forethought or direction. Aberdeen could not possibly have physically changed much during the war years but somehow I failed to recognise any of the surroundings. It all felt surreal and nothing seemed familiar. God knows where I walked but I kept on going, strolling without respite. Even when it got dark I kept on going and going, step after step, on my own enforced route march.

  I did not return home until around five o’clock the next morning. My parents were still up, obviously worried sick. As I crawled up the stairs to find a bed to lie down in, utterly exhausted, they asked where I had been.

  ‘We’ve been out looking for you,’ Mum pleaded, begging for information.

  ‘And all night,’ Dad chimed in. ‘We even called the police. What have you to say for yourself, son? It’s freezing outside.’

  I hated myself. I knew they were trying to be there for me but I just wanted to be on my own. I had lived a solitary and sorry life for so long that love only suffocated me. In many respects my family felt like strangers. How does one describe the feelings of a person who has been through something like we had, something no one could ever have envisaged? They could never comprehend the depths of man’s inhumanity to man or the awfulness of an existence that consisted of surviving one day at a time.

  I flopped down on my old bed in the room that I had helped build with my father all those years ago and slept all day and the next night. The recurring nightmares of the railway came again, leaving me afraid to lie down.

  When I went downstairs the next day I ate a quick and light breakfast before promptly disappearing again. For the next few months my daily routine consisted of long and pointless walks. After a while I started looking at people’s faces trying to spot anybody I knew from before the war but I never did. Not in the whole town. But I did purposely avoid my old haunts, especially the plumbers’ merchants, Duthie Park and the dance halls.

  I created mayhem at home, where I was morose, rude and short on patience. My sister Rhoda, God bless her, was so supportive and in many ways eased the situation, although I cannot ever remember thanking her, such was the state of my mind. I was irrational and unable to control my actions. I wanted only to be on my own, outside the four walls, wandering aimlessly in and around the streets of Aberdeen.

  After a few weeks pounding the strange streets of my home town my body began to fall apart. I started to suffer with pains from beriberi, which attacked my legs, back and arms, and the cold winter air did not help. When my bowels started playing up as well I decided it was time to visit my local GP, Dr Rice.

  I told him that I had amoebic dysentery while incarcerated so he put me on a course of inter-muscular injections. He injected my left arm but the skin began to tighten and then swell and became incredibly painful, so he went for the other, which did the same thing. After that I couldn’t lie on my back or sides, couldn’t bear sheets or clothing to touch them. Life was pretty bad despite the relative luxury I was afforded.

  I still could not eat properly. I left untouched all of my old favourites, which Mum loved preparing for me. Much to my surprise I craved rice, the lousy stuff that we had all hated so much. The aptly named Dr Rice arranged for me to attend Stracathro Hospital – a large country house near Brechin in the neighbouring county of Angus that had been converted into a military hospital.

  They did all of their tests and suggested different foods but I was still unable to take anything except fluids. My health suffered accordingly and I became weaker by the day.

  I stayed there for several weeks. I could go home at the weekends but I had little money and nobody in the family had a car, so it was not an option. Mum and Dossie started out one Saturday but got on the wrong bus and never arrived at the hospital.

  One day a baffled doctor visited my bedside and said he couldn’t understand why I couldn’t take food. I told him, ‘If you had to survive on nothing else but rice and water for three and a half years, then maybe you could understand!’

  ‘Yes, perhaps you are right. We just don’t know what else to do for you,’ he said rather ashamedly.

  ‘Maybe my body is craving rice,’ I suggested in a less defensive tone.

  ‘We could try it.’

  It seemed logical and perhaps not surprisingly it worked. My body responded to the rice and seemed to relax. My throat opened up and my bowels went from a stormy sea to a millpond. I ate rice pudding every day for several weeks – and relished it too! After a while I was put on to tripe, which did me the world of good, and then on to some white fish.

  After three months and a final prognosis of having suffered from a duodenal ulcer, I came out of hospital armed with instructions for my mum on how to cook tripe, which she despised. She cooked fish, poached in milk, and servings of rice, as exotic as it got in those days. To this day I still have to eat rice two or three times a week, with some fish or chicken. Anything else causes havoc with my insides. One of my favourite dishes in Singapore had been a curry but never again. Even an onion is enough to set me off. The diet courtesy of the Emperor’s Imperial Army, along with years of dysentery, had destroyed the linings in my stomach and done irreparable damage.

  Thanks to my new diet and more rest and recuperation at home – where I hardly had to lift a finger – my body, mind and soul began to recover. I wrote to the Royal Army Pay Corps headquarters, gave them my rank and number, and asked for payments because I was still unfit for work. They tallied up my pay for my time as a POW and after deductions for ‘subsistence’ I received the grand sum of £434.00 – for the period from 15 February 1942 to 18 November 1945.

  The charge for ‘subsistence’ infuriated me – they were making us pay for those handfuls of maggoty rice. Yet it was standard practice and applied to all returning prisoners. It is a miracle that they did not charge me for the loss of my rifle, as they did some men.

  Early in 1946 and still a de facto member of the British Army, I was summoned to appear in front of a medical board at Woodend Hospital, Aberdeen. The board comprised four well-fed and comfortable-looking officers sitting behind a desk. They told me that the conditions of my military discharge hinged on my producing my Army ‘records’ and that unless I could produce records of all the diseases that beset me in the POW camps, they were not able to consider my situation.

  I was stunned. I sat in an awkward silence trying to compose my thoughts and control my rage, before speaking.

  ‘Sirs,’ I said. ‘Have you any conception of conditions in the Japanese prison camps?’

  They did not reply so I went on. ‘There were no pencils, pens, paper, aye, no toilet paper, drugs, toiletries, soap or water to wash! Never mind keeping records of each POW in many, many camps, certainly not in Kanyu or the Hellfire Pass camps. Just how much recording the Japanese kept is very little, as my Japanese Record Card shows!’

  The chairman broke the silence that followed, saying, ‘Then we are sorry, we are unable to help.’

&n
bsp; This then was the sort of treatment meted out by the Army. It took another three or four meetings with various medical boards before they offered me demobilisation – but only if I agreed to pass myself as A1, which foolishly I did. I was so fed up of being downtrodden by the Army but I had let them off the hook of having to pay me any kind of disability war pension – it was a dirty trick played on many of the returning Far Eastern prisoners of war.

  Two days later I went on my way down south for an official discharge and was issued with a brown-checked demobbing suit and hat, the usual Army fitting, and a pair of shoes. Hurrah, free of the Army at last.

  By February 1946 I thought it was time to take a chance and try dancing again. I dusted off an old pair of dancing shoes with leather soles (my good pair had been abandoned back in Singapore) and shined them up. As I nuggeted them and buffed up a reasonable shine I was surprised at how unsteady my hands were. I was nervous. While dancing had always come very easily and naturally to me, it felt like starting afresh. It had been so long since I had allowed myself any luxurious thoughts of quicksteps or the tidal rise and fall of the waltz. But above all else, returning to social circles, dealing and talking with strangers, horrified me.

  I decided to go to the Palais de Dance, the classier of the halls, on a quiet Wednesday night. I wore my uniform, which fitted only where it touched my still skeletal frame, and was pleased to see a lot of military people milling around outside. I recognised no faces, however. Inside the band started up and men at once crossed the floor, seemingly as fraught with danger as no man’s land or the mine-ridden seas of the Indian Ocean, and asked women to dance. I stood there for a long time, probably an hour, before I approached a girl. I had noticed she could dance and looked assured yet kind. I ‘tipped’ her dance partner, the polite way of ‘cutting in’, and got the chance for a quickstep double novelty dance. The first thing she said to me was, ‘So you can dance! Why did you stand for so long?’