The Forgotten Highlander - Alistair Urquhart [103]
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