by CL Skelton
‘Tak’ your bloody hands off me,’ he yelled at his guards. ‘Dae ye think I canna walk?’
No one took any notice of him.
‘By the right slow march,’ commanded Donald, and the piper struck up a lament and the drums beat a solemn tattoo as they started towards the battalion.
Among the execution detail there was one man alone who hoped that he had not drawn a blank. Billy Anderson was Jimmy Grigor’s marra, his friend and drinking partner, a man as hot tempered and violent as Grigor himself; a man who, had he believed in God, would have realized that ‘there but for the grace of God …’
Anderson had already made up his mind to disobey the order to aim at the victim’s heart. He was a good shot and he was determined to shoot poor Jimmy right between the eyes. It would be quicker that way. It was the last favour he would be able to do for him.
Though it could not have been more than a couple of minutes, it seemed an eternity to Donald Bruce before the regiment came into sight. He wanted to run, get the damned business over with, but like everything else in the bloody army, it had to be according to regulations. So the procession crept in slow time towards the battalion. First the piper, followed by the drums draped in black. Then the firing party, twelve men and Donald Bruce. Then the coffin and last the prisoner with his guards and the minister who was murmuring all the while in a low monotone.
Grigor, as the battalion hove in sight, seemed determined to put on a show. ‘Hald ya gob, ye psalmy bastard,’ he shouted at the minister, and then to all in general and to no one in particular: ‘Can ye no hurry? It’s bloody cald and youse’ll all be late for breakfast. I’ve had mine.’ He laughed, and there was just a touch of hysteria in his laughter. ‘Will somebody tak’ this bloody Bible puncher awa’? I’ll see ye in hell, minister.’ He paused and looked at the assembled men, men that he had lived with for ten years and more. He spoke again, but now his voice was calm as he looked at them all. ‘’Tis a bonny sight ye are for a mannie’s last look. Hurrah for the fighting hundred and forty-eighth!’
That was when the first man fainted. Peter Leinie slumped forward over his rifle.
‘Leave him,’ growled Sergeant Gibson as the man on each side of him moved to pick him up. Frankie was sympathetic towards the youth; better to leave him where he was until it was all over.
Donald marched his men to a line which had been marked twelve paces from the execution post, and there he halted them. The drums and pipes stopped and the instrumentalists marched off in quick time to the rear of the battalion. In the silence which followed, the coffin was taken to a wooden marker a few paces beyond the post.
Then came Grigor. Quickly the two guards strapped his hands and ankles to the post with a coarse hempen rope and then stood aside while the minister said a few last words to him. Private Anderson was watching Grigor intently, trying to catch his eye, but Grigor looked neither at him nor at the minister, and his lips never moved. Then the minister, his head bowed and shaking sadly in recognition of a task undone, moved away. The two guards placed a white bandage over Grigor’s eyes and stepped aside.
Colonel Willie Bruce, standing to the right of the firing squad, looked at his watch. It was exactly nine o’clock. ‘Carry on, Mr Bruce,’ he said quietly.
Donald ran his tongue over his dry lips. The wind had dropped but the air was still heavy and damp and the only sound he could hear was the heavy breathing of his men. Five words now stood between Jimmy Grigor and Eternity, and Donald Bruce had to say them.
‘Mr Bruce,’ the colonel spoke again, and there was a note of censure in his voice.
‘Squad!’ Four words left. ‘Present!’
The rifles came to the men’s shoulders. Three.
‘Load.’
There was a ragged clicking as the men cocked the hammers of their Snider-Enfields. Two words left.
A longer pause this time, then … ‘Aim.’
A single word now and it would all be over. A second man in the ranks fell, but no one else moved. Their face muscles were tense as they stared compulsively, but unwillingly, at the drama before them. Twice Donald opened his mouth to utter the fatal word. Twice no sound came from his lips. It was too long. Men tried not to look, screwed up their faces, tried to close their eyes or look down at their boots. The pause went on and on until …
‘Damn you! FIRE!’
It was Jimmy Grigor who gave the order. There was a flash, a line of curling smoke, and a single ragged craaack which killed Jimmy Grigor and brought Donald Bruce back to reality. He looked towards the dead man. There was a mass of blood on his chest, and one neat round hole between his eyes.
It was in that moment that the wind blew. A fierce gust cutting in across the Beauly Firth taking the haar with it and revealing the red disc of the rising sun to flood the parade with light, picking out the yellow brasswork and the silvery burnished bayonets of the men. They were standing there transfixed by the horror of the ritual killing and waiting for the next command which would free them from their ordeal.
Two men helped Peter Leinie to his feet.
‘What happened?’ he whispered.
‘It’s over,’ said Frankie Gibson. He eyed the lad with some concern. He was young, probably too young and sensitive, though that apart he had the makings of a good soldier.
‘Firing party, slope arms. Right turn. Quick march.’ Donald called out the orders in rapid succession. He marched them back to the parade ground where the cold grey light was gleaming off the pink of the tall barrack blocks.
‘Firing party, halt! To the left, dismiss.’ He did not even pause to return the men’s salute as they fell out, but ran directly to the toilets in the officers’ mess where he was violently sick.
Slowly he returned to his room in the mess. There he sat down at his plain wooden desk and took pen and paper. Then he stopped.
More than anything he wanted to forget the horror that he had just witnessed. He had not observed the actual moment when Jimmy Grigor’s body slumped at the post, the life torn from it. His eyes had been shut, his facial muscles tensed as he tried to screw up the courage to utter the fateful word. He sat there with the pen clutched in his hand pressed hard upon the surface of the desk. He could not think of anything else, strain though he might. If this was soldiering he knew that he wanted no part of it. He had hated the cold brutality, as cold and bitter as that November morning, more than he had ever hated anything in his life. It was more than he could bear. Desperately he tried to banish the brutal memory from his mind. But it was no good. Over and over again he heard the crackle of the rifles and almost felt the bullets tearing into his own body as they had ripped the life out of Jimmy Grigor.
He sat staring for what must have been several minutes at his blurred and unreal surroundings.
Finally, with an effort, he dipped his pen into the inkwell and started to write. When he did his mind was made up. He wrote rapidly and firmly in his neat precise hand. The letter was addressed to his commanding officer, requesting permission to surrender his commission. He read it through and placed it in an envelope; at that moment Donald had no stomach for the army. He wanted to be out.
As he was sealing the envelope, there was a tap at his door. He looked towards the door, irritated at the interruption. The knock was repeated.
‘Come in.’
Captain Farquhar entered. Farquhar, probably the wealthiest man in the battalion, who loved horses, thoroughbreds, of course, and had been given command of the battalion mules as a consequence, was also commander of C Company and the Gatling gun which went with that honour.
Farquhar in his own way was as much an anomaly in an infantry regiment of the 1880s as was his commanding officer Willie Bruce. Tall, wealthy, and extremely handsome, he was the type of officer that you would have expected to find in one of the crack cavalry regiments. He had a capacity, however, for action which was well hidden under his indolent facade. He was one of those people who could take part in a violent skirmish with the same casual ease
with which he would take his after-dinner brandy and cigar in the mess. He had been several years with the regiment. In a way he was responsible for Willie Bruce getting command, for he had fired the Gatling gun which had cut down Andrew Maclaren and caused the loss of his leg. It had been an unfortunate accident and he knew that he himself was in no way blameworthy. He was sorry of course, but guilt had never entered his mind. He did not brood and he did not dwell on the incident, it was a pure mischance and, as far as Alex Farquhar was concerned, that was an end to the matter. Not that he lacked feelings. When he walked into that room, he knew full well the torment that Donald Bruce was experiencing. It would not have happened to him but he could understand it happening to someone else.
He stood just inside the door, his neatly drawn, delicate features moulded in an expression of sympathy for the suffering of his brother officer.
‘Donald,’ he said, ‘the old man wants to see you now.’
‘I can guess why,’ replied Donald, chewing at his bottom lip. ‘It wasn’t a very good show, was it?’
‘My dear chap,’ Farquhar was sympathetic, ‘I can only say thank God it wasn’t me.’ Then as Donald made no move, ‘I shouldn’t keep the old boy waiting if I were you. He didn’t seem very happy.’
‘Thanks, Alex,’ replied Donald, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll go now.’
‘Look, Donald,’ said Farquhar, ‘I know what you must be feeling. I’ve been through it too, I shot one of my own men once. You’ve just got to learn to live with it.’
‘That was in India, an accident, in action; this is different.’
‘I suppose so. You’d better go and see the C.O. Like me to walk over with you?’
‘No, no. I’m all right, honestly.’
Farquhar left him and Donald picked up his note, put on his feather bonnet, and went out through the pillared portico of the officers’ quarters. The day was brightening and the winter sun was beginning, fitfully, to break through, gleaming off the little puddles, and here and there sparkling on the wet walls of the barrack blocks. There was a chill in the air and there was no one about, and for this Donald was grateful. The men would have been given a stand-down until after the midday meal. He could visualize them sitting around in their bare, strictly functional barrack rooms. Each of them exactly like its neighbour. The walls painted brown to a height of exactly four feet and six inches, topped by a line of black one inch wide and then yellow up to the white ceiling. The two rows of iron cots, twelve a side, with their straw palliasses and blankets neatly folded. Above each bed a green painted tin locker with the owner’s kit neatly stacked according to regulations. A spotless rifle would be standing by each bed and just in front of it a scrubbed wooden bedside locker. The centre of the room would be dominated by a cylindrical iron stove. Though the day was cold, the stove would be unlit, for the rules demanded that fires should not be ignited before four o’clock in the afternoon. Beside the stove a burnished coal bucket, gleaming in the gloom, filled twice a week by the barrack orderly from the regimental coal dump.
At least there would not be the smell of stale food so common to army barracks. The Maclaren Highlanders were modern; by current standards, innovators. They had built a proper mess hall for the men where all meals were taken, something unheard of in most regiments, where the men ate sitting on their beds in the same room in which they slept.
The men themselves would be sitting around on the ends of their beds in tight little groups, and if they said anything, it would be to the effect that at least there would be no kit inspection that morning. Of what they had witnessed, they would say not a word.
They would talk about it eventually of course. In a week or two it would become a coarse soldier’s joke and Donald Bruce would be the butt. Donald’s lips tightened as he looked round the familiar square, gripping his letter. He hurried to the front of Headquarters Block and went in through the main entrance, returning the salute of the sentry as he passed.
He walked on down the long corridor ‒ it was painted in exactly the same brown and black and yellow as the barrack rooms ‒ his boots echoing in its bare emptiness. Offices flanked him as he passed: the regimental sergeant-major, the Orderly Room where they did the paper work, the adjutant, and the second-in-command. But always facing him, almost threatening in its heavy dark polished oak, was the door to his father’s office, bearing the legend picked out in gold: Commanding Officer the Maclaren Highlanders, and beneath this an embossed plaque of the regimental crest, a snarling Highland wildcat’s head and their motto: Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum. He tapped on the door and went in.
Colonel Bruce glanced up from behind the desk which was a legacy of the man who had founded the 148th Regiment of Foot, eighty years ago on the twenty-second of January. Sir Godfrey Maclaren, great-grandfather of the current holder of the title, Sir Andrew Maclaren, gazed disapprovingly down from his gilt frame on the wall flanked by similar portraits of his successors including Sir Henry Maclaren, father of both Andrew and Willie ‒ Andrew from the marriage bed and Willie from an idyllic moment in the heather. The wall was getting a little crowded and Willie was determined, if he could persuade the mess committee to accept, to present them with the portraits. Also on the wall, framed, was Willie’s personal indulgence, the badge of every rank which he had held throughout his military career, from the single stripe of a lance-corporal, through regimental sergeant-major, to the crown and single pip of lieutenant-colonel. There were also a few, a very few, personal trophies and mementos. There was a spear (or was it an assegai? Donald was never sure), a leather shield from Africa, a boomerang from Australia, a carved ivory elephant from India, and a daguerreotype of Donald’s mother, Maud Bruce.
Donald approached the man at the desk, saluted, and stood to attention. For some moments Willie Bruce regarded his son from under his bushy, ginger eyebrows which seemed to grow more out than across. There was a sympathy and a gentleness in his father’s expression which was the last thing Donald had expected to find.
‘All right, Donald,’ said Willie. ‘Tak’ your hat off and sit ye doon.’ Willie still spoke with the distinct accent which he had acquired during his childhood which had been spent with his mother and stepfather in the little whitewashed cottage which nestled in the south face of the hill behind Culbrech House.
‘Sir,’ said Donald formally without moving, ‘before you say any more, I want to apologize for what happened this morning. I am sorry, sir, I know I behaved in an unsoldierly manner, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t bring myself to say that word. And that is the reason why I have brought you this.’
Donald held the letter out and towards his father, and when Willie made no move to take it from him, he placed it on the desk in front of him.
Willie had not taken his eyes off his son for a moment.
‘I told ye to sit doon.’
‘Sorry, sir,’ replied Donald, obeying. He took off his feather bonnet and placed it on the floor beside the plain straight-backed wooden chair across from his father and sat there waiting as Willie slowly picked up the envelope.
‘I think,’ Willie said, very slowly, ‘I think I ken what is in here.’ He tapped the envelope against the tips of the fingers of his left hand. ‘I think you should take it back and tear it up.’
‘No, sir.’ Donald looked down, not wanting to meet his father’s gaze. ‘No, sir, my mind is made up. I’ll never be a soldier, sir.’
‘Wait a bittie,’ said Willie. ‘Before you say any more, there are two things I want you to know. First, you’re a Bruce. You’re my son. And secondly ‒ I had intended it as a surprise, but in the circumstances, I shall have to tell you now ‒ young Gordon will be joining the regiment next week.’
Donald looked up sharply and met his father’s gaze. There was no vestige of expression there. The leathery weather-beaten skin, creased with long service and increasing age, was immobile. The eyes were neither hard nor gentle, neither cruel nor compassionate; they just looked, and they seemed to look right into his mi
nd.
Willie Bruce waited as he looked into the young man opposite him, waited to see what sort of effect his pronouncement would have. He saw the uncertainty in his son’s eyes and he thought he saw the torment there too at the mention of Gordon’s name. Donald’s mouth was half open as if he was wanting to reply and could not find the words. The announcement had certainly come as a surprise to him, though he should have known. Young Gordon, who had gone to Sandhurst during Donald’s last term there, had aped his elder brother in fervent adulation of everything that he did. Not without cause, for Donald was one of those people who did everything well. Everything until today. Today he had failed, completely.
Naturally Gordon would know nothing of this, but he would find out. Donald was Gordon’s god and the knowledge of what this would do to their relationship weighed heavily upon Donald, for he had a very great affection for his younger brother.
‘I see, sir,’ replied Donald after a long pause.
‘What do you see, Donald?’
‘Well, sir … I’m not sure.’
‘Do you not think that it might be a terrible thing for a young man to join his regiment on the day that his brother ran away?’ He stressed the words ‘ran away’.
‘But I’m not running away, sir.’
‘Are you quite sure, Donald?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I tell you that you are wrong. You are running away, my son,’ said Willie. ‘The job that you were given to do today was probably the worst job that you will ever be given in the whole of your career, unless you get command and have to order good men to what you ken well will be their deaths. This morning, there was not a man in the battalion who would have willingly changed places with you.’
‘But they would have done it, sir.’
‘I have not yet finished, Donald. There was a time, it happened only once, but I mind fine there was a time when I too would have left the regiment. I did not, through no virtue of my own, but I bless the day that I did not.’