Photo by Peter Teago
AN CARRANNACH The General Interest Magazine of Lochcarron, Shieldaig, Applecross, Kishorn, Torridon & Kinlochewe Districts.
NO: 386
MAY 2020
COMPLIMENTARY
TOMORROW. Well, well, Lachie, let’s be seeing to you. You’ve finished your mash, I see. Would you like your bucket of water now? I’ll just draw it off for you. There, boy, you’re enjoying that. This heat’s not what you’re used to back home, up and down the ben with the gralloched beast on your back. It’s a trauchle for all of us, far from the shores of Loch Carron, or wherever we’ve come from. Maybe these hardy wee Indian lads can take it, or the big strapping Aussies with their shady hats. But Roddy and me, we’d rather be out in the boat off Plockton after the cuddies in a good rainsquall from the Cuillins. These Turks up there on the heights are laughing at us, I’ll be bound. It’s us’ll be trying to take the smile off their faces the morn’s morn. Let’s be seeing to your coat now. My goodness, these ticks are a right pest, we’d better be getting some of them out and squashed. Ay, it’ll be a warm day tomorrow, I’m thinking. As bad as that first day, off the ‘Euryalus’ on to the beach at Cape Helles and up thon blasted cliffs. You mind, Lachie, you spent most of the day ferrying the ammo and water to these poor devils of the Lancs stuck halfway up the rocks for half the night. A lot of them bought it that day, and a few good ponies forbye. Not what you were trained for. You’d know you were doing your job if you had the barrel of a screw -gun on your back footing it up the brae to a fine gun-position, so’s Roddy and Uisdean and myself could get it set up on a nice line of fire. But I’m thinking you’ll be out of it again the morn. Looks like these Gallipoli cliffs will be too much even for you. So us Lochcarron and Stornoway lads will be putting our backs into it and humphing the bits ourselves under all that the Pashas can fling at us. Good job we’re the tallest lads in the whole British Army, the biggest targets as well, I’m thinking.
Ay, it’ll be a warm tomorrow all right. But I’ll see you in the early morning, as we’ll be loading you and the other garrons up with the guns and ammo to take to the assembly points. Then you’ll be back and forth most of the day bringing up the spares and extra ammo and, maybe, carrying a few of us back to the docs. Let’s hope I don’t see you then. Well, I’ll just say oidche mhath leat, a’ Lachaidh, and hope to see you if we’re spared and well. Time for a few verses from the Good Book before I turn in. Not that I’ll sleep much, I’m thinking. Alan MacGillivray (The Ross Mountain Battery, part of the 4th Highland Mountain Brigade of the Royal Artillery, the only mountain artillery unit in the British Army, was recruited from Ross and Cromarty, with sections based in Stornoway, Lochcarron and Dingwall. Along with the Argyll and Bute Batteries, it deployed the ‘screw-guns’, 10-pounder breech-loading cannons capable of being quickly assembled from sections carried on the backs of Highland ponies, or garrons, up mountainsides to commanding positions. It first saw service in Gallipoli in 1915 and suffered heavy losses. Between April and June, 62 officers and men were killed or wounded out of about 600; further losses forced the amalgamation of the Ross and Argyll Batteries into one before the Gallipoli force was evacuated in December 1915. The Mountain Batteries went on to serve in Mesopotamia and Salonika, where they ended the war in 1918. Because they could not adequately cope with the terrain, the ponies were replaced by locally-sourced mules.)
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