The Forgotten Highlander - Alistair Urquhart [61]
In moments of adversity I would often think back to my childhood and I remembered going barefoot during the long hot summers we spent down at the Aberdeenshire fishing village of Newtonhill, where I was born. My mother’s parents had retired there and lived in a house called ‘Fairseat’, which we nicknamed ‘Sair feet’. My elder brother Douglas and I used to go to the beach in the morning. We stayed there all day until teatime, having great adventures that fortunately our parents never knew about. We explored caves, went cliff-climbing and dived off a breakwater that was probably fifteen to twenty feet high. One of the local families, the Cobblers as we called them, had two boys about our age. They would come down to the beach and do much the same stuff as us. But for some reason Douglas and I never really cared for those two lads. One day I remember we had fisticuffs over a burn – standing on either side of it slugging away at each other.
I remembered the magical summer at the age of seven or eight, when my mother’s brother, our Uncle Alfie, and Aunt Alice returned home from India, where he worked as a tea planter. They came to visit us at Newtonhill. We got home one day and were surprised to see our auntie and uncle. They took us through to the front room and I saw a white sheet propped against the sideboard. Uncle Alfie said, ‘Now boys, we have a surprise for you but you’re not going on the main road with these.’ He pulled off the sheet to reveal two sparkling, brand-new bikes. It was just amazing and beyond our wildest dreams. We went outside and tried to ride our new bicycles. Once we got the hang of it and mastered them, we went down to the village. The first thing we did was to ride past the Cobblers’ house and shout out. We were the only ones in the village with bicycles so you can imagine the reaction!
Reflecting on my happy childhood, my job and my family was a useful tool that I used to get me through some very hard times.
Just after losing my boots I noticed that some of the men were wearing ‘jungle slippers’ made of bark and leaves. I heard that one chap in my hut had discovered a particularly inventive way of making sandals from a jungle plant. After hobbling back from the railway I tried to find him. For a change I entered through the back entrance of the hut and noticed a chap from my work party lying alone in his bed-space.
‘Hello Bill,’ I said to him as I crouched down. He was from Northampton and had left his newly wed wife back in England after joining the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire regiment. I normally spoke very little on the railway but Bill had a friendly face and we always exchanged quiet words while working.
‘Hey Bill, it’s me, Alistair.’ He looked at me and tried to speak but nothing came out. I could tell that he was suffering from an acute strain of malaria. Through the fear in his eyes I could see that he was dying. I sat down beside him and took his hand. It was sticky but cool. His breath was laboured, life fading from him.
I stayed with Bill all night. I nursed him the best I could, giving him some rice and most of my water. As the night wore on he began losing consciousness. He was away with the fairies and by 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. he was gone. Holding his hand I felt it go limp. He twitched for some time after he passed away. When it stopped I fetched the medical orderly and left. When I returned he was gone.
I never went back to ask about the ‘jungle slippers’, even though I saw some men wearing them around the camp. They did not look particularly comfortable and were already falling apart so I left it. And besides, my experience