Written For Private D. Sutherland
killed in action in the German trench,
and the others who died
So you were David’s father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.
Oh, the letters he wrote you,
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting,
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.
You were only David’s father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight -
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.
Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers’,
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.
Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
The screamed ‘Don’t leave me, Sir’,
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.
Oh gay were we in spirit
In the hours of the night
When we lay at rest at Albert
And waited for the fight;
Gay and gallant were we
On the day that we set forth,
But broken, broken, broken
Is the valour of the North.
The wild warpipes were calling,
Our hearts were blithe and free
When we went up the valley
To the death we could not see.
Clear lay the wood before us
In the clear summer weather,
But broken, broken, broken
Are the sons of the heather.
In the cold of the morning,
In the burning of the day,
The thin lines stumbled forward,
The dead and dying lay.
By the unseen death that caught us
By the bullets’ raging hail
Broken, broken, broken
Is the pride of the Gael.
This is a repost of an earlier post in memory of my Grandfather Sam Robertson who, as a member of the 1/5th Royal Scots Fusiliers moved from V beach to the firing line near Fir Tree Wood in Gallipoli exactly 100 years ago tonight. The next four days and nights would be his brutal initiation into 3 years of life in the front line in WWI.
Hullo there ma wee blog,
I don't have a clue what to call this post as it feels like it might be a bit of a ramble due to it being a late night - currently nearly 2am - and, sitting at my usual place at the kitchen table, I have a wee Singleton of Dufftown single malt whisky by my side. Don't worry though, like me its old enough to be out on its own at this time of night.........almost.
Ah, actually I know now where this is going and why..........
On Monday past we were invited out for a quiet informal meal and get together by some friends in Dunbar. We went to a hotel called "The Barns Ness". In the hotel is a small plaque explaining that the wood on the walls of the dining room came from a ship called the 'Mauretania' which was the sister ship of the 'Luisitania', which was torpedoed at the start of WW1 with horrendous loss of life. The beautifully carved wood was recovered from the ship when it was broken up at the end of its working life.
Nice story, nice meal, nice evening out right?
Aye it was, but it was more than that too.
As I have a bit of spare time on my hands at the moment I have been doing a fair bit of reading. As usual, I don't just read one thing at a time, so currently I am reading Stephen Fry's 'Moab is my washpot', Titania Hardies 'Rose Labyrinth' and John Buchans 'History of the Royal Scots Fusiliers'.
John Buchan, who is best known for the novel 'The thirty Nine Steps' wrote this history, in memory of his brother, an officer who - like my grandfather - served in the regiment. Alastair Buchan was killed in action on the western front, April 9th 1917. This was part of the battle of Arras. 38 Scots battalions including RSF took part in the attack. In British terms, a predominately Scottish affair, with more Scots involved than at Waterloo and many times more than involved in the battle of Bannockburn.
My grandfather survived being shot on 3 separate occasions, was returned to action each time and spent the best part of three and a half years in the front line, first in Gallipoli and then in The Western Front. Family history says he finally badly twisted his ankle on duckboards in a trench and while lying alone but for a couple of others in a tin shed at a field station, suffered an artillery bombardment of several hours. My Grandmother believed it was this episode, incapacitated, cruelly exposed and incapable of finding shelter, that left him with the condition which in those days was known as 'shell shock', but is now known as PTSD or 'post traumatic stress disorder'. From the accounts I heard as a child which were heavily sanitised, he came back a changed man and although was able to function in his previous job as a local postman for a few years, had to undergo increasingly long periods of hospitalisation and ultimately, complete incapacity. All the years I knew him he was bedridden, shaking constantly. Like many others he never received any war disability pension or recognition of his condition as being war injury related.
Much loved, he died in 1967 having lived with his condition for fifty years.
I was eight - and devastated.
Joining up in early 1915, he sailed from Liverpool on board the 'Mauretania' on 21st May and landed in Gallipoli on June 6th. His battalion of almost 900 men was part of the 52nd division which was approx 10900 strong. The 2 battalions of RSF were immediately put into the line where between July 3rd and July 13th, losses were 4800 men. Early 1916 the campaign was abandoned as a failure.
The regimental history records this episode as follows:
' The losses for the 52nd division were such that for the Scottish Lowlands it was a second Flodden. In large areas between the Tweed and Forth scarcely a household but mourned a son '
and
' Unless one has seen it there is no imagination that can picture a belt of land some four hundred yards wide converted into a seething hell of destruction. Rifle and machine gun bullets rip up the earth, ping past the ear, or whing off the loose stones; shrapnel bursts overhead and leaden bullets strike the ground with a vicious thud; the earth is rent into yawning chasms, while planks, sandbags, clods and great chunks of ragged steel hurtle through the air. The noise is an indescribable, nerve racking, continuous, deafening roar while clouds of smoke only allow intermittent view of the whole damnable inferno '
It cost Winston Churchill, whose idea it was, his post as first lord of Admiralty. {Ironically he was made Commander in Chief of the Royal Scots Fusiliers}
The 2 battalions split, some to Palestine and the rest, grandfather included, to the western front.
Grandpa's story as described to me as a child trying to understand was simply that he was hurt in the big war and that we didn't talk about it. Much later he was described to me as a very brave man who had "gone over the top" on several major engagements. Who knows in reality what his experience was. Not me for sure. But I did experience the impact of that experience. My father helped his Mum look after his Dad every day as we lived nearby.
So before work - like his dad he too was a postie at first - he would go and wash and treat his Dads bedsores. Before he came home he would again go in and take care of any needs that might be required. At least twice a week I too would go to see Gran'pa and while there I would be given the task of shaving him with an old Phillips three headed electric razor. We all had things we did with Gran'pa and shaving him became my role. Being very small, at least when I started, I would have to climb onto the bed beside him and reach around his face while I shaved him, taking great care not to move the wooden frame that held the heavy blankets off his legs. Although by that time Grandpa couldn't speak more than two or three words at a time, I remember well his voice as he ran his damaged hand over his face and found a wee bit I had missed. "Here," he would say and I would go back and do that bit again and he would sometimes chuckle, a rumble deep in his chest and his jaw waving back and forth showed me he smiled. Sometimes he got me to go over bits again and again as a bit of fun I think. Job complete, I would carefully dismantle and clean the razor with its special miniature brush and show it to Grandpa for approval before putting it back together with small hands and sliding it back into its case.
Shaving an adult is a highly serious thing for a wee boy you know.
Being so close physically to him so often I remember every crease, nook and cranny of that old man's face. I remember the look in his eye as he watched me shave him or give him his tea in an odd china cup with a spout on one side and a lid on {In fact I have it still - just a magpie really!} He seemed able to look right into a wee boys heart. I remember his skin, his hair and his smell; how his face felt as small hands patted after-shave on; how he would try and hold me as I reached across him at the limit of my balance as I shaved him; how he would wince if I fed him tea that was too hot. I would sometimes lie on Grannies bed across the room from him and we would read silently together, him with a book on a darkwood frame, beautiful and specially made for him by one of my uncles, and me with my book propped on bare knees.
I remember spending a night, being very young and sleeping in Grannies bed, in the same room as Gran'pa, and hearing him moan and occasionally shriek during the night until Gran got out of bed and went across to murmur something to him for an unknown while before coming back to bed with a quiet but commanding "Now, now, you. Back to sleep. Nothing to worry you here. Just Gran'pa dreaming. Just a dream," as she got back into bed herself.
And thats why I found myself thinking of him and of years past on Monday night and silently raising a glass in that wood panelled dining room of the Barns Ness Hotel.
Onward led the road again
Through the sad uncoloured plain
Under twilight brooding dim,
And along the utmost rim
Wall and rampart risen to sight
Cast a shadow not of night,
And beyond them seemed to glow
Bonfires lighted long ago.
And my dark conductor broke
Silence at my side and spoke,
Saying, "You conjecture well:
Yonder is the gate of hell."
AE Houseman
One hundred years ago yesterday my Grandfather, Sam Robertson, 1/5th Royal Scots Fusiliers and Archibald McKinnon 1/4th Royal Scots Fusiliers, my friends Bruce and Scot Mathieson's great Grandfather, both landed in Gallipoli within a few hours of each other. These men, part of the 52nd Brigade were shelled on the beach for two days before being sent to the firing line on June 9th. By June 13th 4,800 of them were dead or wounded. A lesser known campaign here than the war in Europe, Gallipoli is marked for its brutality and the particularly merciless nature of the terrain and the fighting. The Royal Scots Fusiliers fought in The Battles of Gully Ravine, Achi Baba Nullah, Krithia Nullahs and The evacuation of Helles.
Ambulance, Gully Ravine, Gallipoli
Jan 1916 Evacuated from Gallipoli to Egypt due to severe casualties from combat, disease and harsh weather. Took over defence of the Suez Canal and then engaged in the Palestine Campaign; Fought Battle of Dueidar, The Battle of Romani. 1917 The First Battle of Gaza, The Second Battle of Gaza, The Third Battle of Gaza, Wadi el Hesi, Burqa, El Maghar, The capture of Junction Station, The Battle of Nabi Samweil, The Battle of Jaffa. April 1918 Embarked for France landing at Marseilles and engaged in various actions on the Western Front including; The Battle of Albert, The Battle of the Scarpe, The Battle of the Drocourt-Queant Line, The Battle of the Canal du Nord, The Final Advance in Artois. 11.11.1918 Ended the war at Jurbise north of Mons, France. Both men lived to come home though both were injured, Archie was shipped home from Gallipoli with a bullet wound to the leg. My grandfather, who survived being shot on 3 separate occasions and was returned to the front line each time, left Gallipoli and served in France by the end of the war. At war's end he suffered a decline from the condition then known as 'shell shock' {now PTSD} into complete debilitation, intermittent hallucination and nightmares which lasted until his death in 1967. History neatly records the fighting ended in 1918. Life is rarely so neat.
I looked out of the car window from my seat in the rear as we drove across Belgium to Ypres and Paschendaele. For mile after mile the country all around was flat and open, gently undulating, the road occupying a consistent slightly raised position as it crossed a land which was fertile and full of farmland, a throwback to early history perhaps when roads had developed on the higher ground as the drainage was better and open view helped wary travellers see any approaching threat.
Gordon and his wife were in the front of the car, the lovely G and I in the back. The holiday had initially been planned as a boys get away, something we have done for a couple of years now, and originally intended to have been a battlefield tour following in the footsteps of our Grandfather who had served here in WWI, but our plans had changed to include our wives and we curtailed our plans to a broader itinerary. This trip was going to be our one chance to spend time in Belgium looking at Grandads history, although we also spent time looking at a few WWII sites in the part of Holland where we were staying.
From my viewpoint in the rear I could look out windows either side and noticed that even from a minor elevation such as the roadway the view was extensive. Given the reason for our visit I was struck by the defensive advantage of even the slightest higher ground. A difference of even 30 or 40 feet would have been highly significant. It very clearly brought home why this had been a machine gun dominated killing ground. I felt chilled in recognising this so casually as we passed through at 90 kilometres an hour, thinking of how it must have been obscenely obvious to those stuck out there all those years ago. The thought of climbing out of cover and walking across those flat expanses towards machine guns, barbed wire and infantry filled trenches just doesn't compute within my modern mind and sensibilities.
Our Grandfather had enlisted early in 1915 when aged to do so and after basic training had been sent to Gallipoli as part of the ill fated attempt to open up a second front in the Dardanelles as a means of breaking the deadlock in western Europe. A simple country lad he found himself in an alien landscape in Mediterranean heat in the same thick woolen uniform that the troops in France and Belgium had been given. It must have been awful. Two days after landing his regiment was sent into the line as part of the 52nd division, almost 11,000 men. Within 10 days five and a half thousand of them were dead or injured and the rest found themselves hopelessly outnumbered and pinned down in a relatively small area, backs to the sea, a situation that would remain for almost 9 months. Existence in those fetid, fly blown trenches, where dysentery quickly broke out due to the inability of men to maintain any semblance of personal hygiene or sanitation, exposed to constant fire as they were due to being completely overlooked by the enemy positions, was a hellish experience. Shot himself during one attack on enemy lines, he recovered and was returned to the trenches until the troops were withdrawn in January 1916.
The remains of the two battalions were split, some to Palestine, the rest - including our Grandfather - were sent to the western front where he would spend the rest of the war in and around Ypres and Paschendaele, amongst other places. In total he spent 3 years in front line trenches and survived being shot a further twice, returning to the front line each time.
Gravestones, Paschendaele New British Cemetery
As we reached the outskirts of Paschendaele we stopped at the New British Cemetery, where newly excavated and identified soldiers are re-interred. It looked small and well tended as we parked, but it wasn't until you entered and looked at the information plaque that it became clear that there were three thousand British and Commonwealth graves in this small and carefully tended space
Items recovered during trench excavations.
The excavations which have taken place have also brought to light some of the everyday items used by soldiers, some heartbreakingly familiar even today as I immediately recognised the branding of a favourite marmalade that often sits on our breakfast table. Poignant signs of an attempt at normality in the middle of war where there was little chance of a normality of any significance.
Various styles of gas mask
After spending time at the museum in Paschendaele we moved on to the beautifully restored town of Ypres. It's one of those places which casts a spell over you and the lovely G and I agreed it's somewhere we would like to visit again, despite the constant reminders of the destruction of man and place that are all around. We spent the afternoon exploring the town and, while the girls left to do some shopping, Gordon and I headed into the enormous and powerful museum and exhibition which is contained in the Cloth Hall in the main square
Tyne Cot Cemetery
There are places where you can feel physically assaulted by the effect of history. I first came to understand that when The Lovely G and I visited Auschwitz concentration camp a few years ago. The reality of an immense and obscene wrong pressed heavily down on you and replaced curiosity and historical interest with a real sense of sadness, tragedy and deep foreboding of what 'civilised' man is capable of. I left that dreadful place mentally and physically exhausted with a heavy heart and a solid headache, glad to have been but not wanting to ever return.
I felt the same when we visited Tyne Cot cemetery, one of the largest in the battlefields. Unspoken need saw us peel away from each other and walk in solitary contemplation around what is literally a field of fallen. 12,000 graves and the names of 35,000 missing men inscribed on wall plaques confront you with a reality that's impossible to ignore. Boisterous teenagers brought to visit on school trips fell quiet after a few minutes and walked silently on. The path to and from the cemetery to the visitor center contains hidden speakers which softly list the fallen by name and age, an endless chain of reminder and remembrance.
It was a place of sobering impact that left me thanking my lucky stars that my generation never went through anything like that. I think all politicians should be made to walk round somewhere like this every couple of years and consider what benefits any one of those men could have brought to humanity. How many doctors, inventors, thinkers, scientists or artists lie all around in a place like that. Perhaps then there would be less conflict in the world. {or perhaps conscription to front line forces of politicians sons and daughters would be needed to reinforce the effect}
Tablet at the entrance to Ypres Museum.
My thoughts then and since have often drifted back to think of our Grandfather who came home a changed man from that who had gone away nearly four years earlier. Caught injured and exposed in an artillery bombardment while a medical station he suffered from what's now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but was then called by the more graphic and in his case more accurate 'Shell Shock'. By what little margin did he avoid lying there in Tyne Cot or one of the hundreds of other cemeteries that mark the extent of battle. That thankfully he did allows me to write this today.
He returned to his job as a country postman but very soon began to suffer increasingly frequently from episodes of shaking and traumatic hallucination which confined him to a wheelchair by the time of the Second World War, and ultimately to being completely bedridden. By the time I came to know and love him as my grandpa he could barely speak and shook constantly, something as a child I accepted as being completely normal and just him.
He died in 1967 having lived with the effect of the horrors of those trenches for almost fifty more years.
To read more of him and my recollections of him go here
We observed the 2 minute silence at 11.00am as did millions of others and like many considered the loss and sacrifice of millions of dead and injured in many countries and from many war in those private moments.
I thought selfishly of my own family and was grateful that for all the involvement we had our folk returned to us to carry on with life and love. Most are gone now but their families live on and grow in many ways.
Sam Robertson RSF Gallipoli and Western Front 1915 - 1918 Tom Hughes RFC France 1914 - 1918
Sam Robertson RAF 1944 -1945 Bill Robertson Fleet Air Arm 1944 - 1946
This year, as the last of the Tommies died, there has been much remembering of the first world war as the direct links have now been broken. It brought back many memories of my own Grandfather who served in the Royal Scots Fusiliers.
This from the history of the regiment by John Buchan.
The Attack on Guillemont. July 23rd 1916.
" The enemy second line having been won from Pozieres to Delville Wood, the next main objectives became Pozieres and Guillemont - the first because it was part of the crest of Thiepval plateau and the second because its capture was necessary before we could align our advance with that of the French. Guillemont presented an ugly problem. The approach to it from Trones Wood lay over perfectly bare and open country. The attack was delivered by the 89th and 90th brigades and in the latter was the Manchester regiment and the Royal Scots Fusiliers. The Fusiliers assembled just east of Trones Wood, an indifferent jumping off ground - with D company in trenches north of Guillemont - Trones Wood road, A and B companies were south of the road and C in an improvised trench near to D. The frontage of the battalion was about two hundred and sixty yards. The attack started at 4.45am and almost from the first things went wrong. The Manchesters were late in starting. Colonel Walsh was to move forward in support with the Fusiliers battalion headquarters and two companies of the 16th Manchesters but the two companies never appeared, and communication with the first wave very soon became impossible. Meanwhile the Scots Fusiliers had made straight for their objective, but the advance on both their flanks halted, and presently they were a lone spearhead without support. There was a heavy enemy barrage on the east front of Trones Wood and the Guillemont Rd was swept by machine guns. It would appear that D company and about one third of A company reached the east side of Guillemont village and that B and C companies were on the western face. The commander of D company Lt. Murray, forced his way back to headquarters about noon to say that without immediate support the battalion would be cut off. He himself had been right through the village. But there were no adequate reserves available and soon nothing could move and live on the ground between Trones Wood and Guillemont. Everywhere, except in the Scots Fusliers sector, the attack had failed, and the battalion had to pay the price for its lonely glory. Colonel Walsh could do nothing but hold the trenches east of Trones Wood until relieved on 1st of August. The Royal Scots went into action with 20 officers and 750 men. Of these 3 officers and 40 others, chiefly headquarters staff, remained with Colonel Walsh at the close of the day, and later nearly 100 others dribbled back through another brigade. The rest of the battalion were dead, wounded or captured. Total losses were 633 men.
The division commander wired to Colonel Walsh during that day 'I cannot tell you how grieved I am for the loss of your splendid battalion and above all for those still left in Guillemont. They did grandly and all that men could do'
The scanty remains of the battalion moved north on 11 August to Bethune, where for two months while it regained it strength it stayed in a relatively quiet part of the front."
I don't have a clue what to call this post as it feels like it might be a bit of a ramble due to it being a late night - currently nearly 2am - and, sitting at my usual place at the kitchen table, I have a wee Singleton of Dufftown single malt whisky by my side. Don't worry though, like me its old enough to be out on its own at this time of night.........almost.
Ah, actually I know now where this is going and why..........
On Monday past we were invited out for a quiet informal meal and get together by some friends in Dunbar. We went to a hotel called "The Barns Ness". In the hotel is a small plaque explaining that the wood on the walls of the dining room came from a ship called the 'Mauretania' which was the sister ship of the 'Luisitania', which was torpedoed at the start of WW1 with horrendous loss of life. The beautifully carved wood was recovered from the ship when it was broken up at the end of its working life.
Nice story, nice meal, nice evening out right?
Aye it was, but it was more than that too.
As I have a bit of spare time on my hands at the moment I have been doing a fair bit of reading. As usual, I don't just read one thing at a time, so currently I am reading Stephen Fry's 'Moab is my washpot', Titania Hardies 'Rose Labyrinth' and John Buchans 'History of the Royal Scots Fusiliers'.
John Buchan, who is best known for the novel 'The thirty Nine Steps' wrote this history, in memory of his brother, an officer who - like my grandfather - served in the regiment. Alastair Buchan was killed in action on the western front, April 9th 1917. This was part of the battle of Arras. 38 Scots battalions including RSF took part in the attack. In British terms, a predominately Scottish affair, with more Scots involved than at Waterloo and many times more than involved in the battle of Bannockburn.
My grandfather survived being shot on 3 separate occasions, was returned to action each time and spent the best part of three and a half years in the front line, first in Gallipoli and then in The Western Front. Family history says he finally badly twisted his ankle on duckboards in a trench and while lying alone but for a couple of others in a tin shed at a field station, suffered an artillery bombardment of several hours. My Grandmother believed it was this episode, incapacitated, cruelly exposed and incapable of finding shelter, that left him with the condition which in those days was known as 'shell shock', but is now known as PTSD or 'post traumatic stress disorder'. From the accounts I heard as a child which were heavily sanitised, he came back a changed man and although was able to function in his previous job as a local postman for a few years, had to undergo increasingly long periods of hospitalisation and ultimately, complete incapacity. All the years I knew him he was bedridden, shaking constantly. Like many others he never received any war disability pension or recognition of his condition as being war injury related.
Much loved, he died in 1967 having lived with his condition for fifty years.
I was eight - and devastated.
Joining up in early 1915, he sailed from Liverpool on board the 'Mauretania' on 21st May and landed in Gallipoli on June 6th. His battalion of almost 900 men was part of the 52nd division which was approx 10900 strong. The 2 battalions of RSF were immediately put into the line where between July 3rd and July 13th, losses were 4800 men. Early 1916 the campaign was abandoned as a failure.
The regimental history records this episode as follows:
' The losses for the 52nd division were such that for the Scottish Lowlands it was a second Flodden. In large areas between the Tweed and Forth scarcely a household but mourned a son '
and
' Unless one has seen it there is no imagination that can picture a belt of land some four hundred yards wide converted into a seething hell of destruction. Rifle and machine gun bullets rip up the earth, ping past the ear, or whing off the loose stones; shrapnel bursts overhead and leaden bullets strike the ground with a vicious thud; the earth is rent into yawning chasms, while planks, sandbags, clods and great chunks of ragged steel hurtle through the air. The noise is an indescribable, nerve racking, continuous, deafening roar while clouds of smoke only allow intermittent view of the whole damnable inferno '
It cost Winston Churchill, whose idea it was, his post as first lord of Admiralty. {Ironically he was made Commander in Chief of the Royal Scots Fusiliers}
The 2 battalions split, some to Palestine and the rest, grandfather included, to the western front.
Grandpa's story as described to me as a child trying to understand was simply that he was hurt in the big war and that we didn't talk about it. Much later he was described to me as a very brave man who had "gone over the top" on several major engagements. Who knows in reality what his experience was. Not me for sure. But I did experience the impact of that experience. My father helped his Mum look after his Dad every day as we lived nearby.
So before work - like his dad he too was a postie at first - he would go and wash and treat his Dads bedsores. Before he came home he would again go in and take care of any needs that might be required. At least twice a week I too would go to see Gran'pa and while there I would be given the task of shaving him with an old Phillips three headed electric razor. We all had things we did with Gran'pa and shaving him became my role. Being very small, at least when I started, I would have to climb onto the bed beside him and reach around his face while I shaved him, taking great care not to move the wooden frame that held the heavy blankets off his legs. Although by that time Grandpa couldn't speak more than two or three words at a time, I remember well his voice as he ran his damaged hand over his face and found a wee bit I had missed. "Here," he would say and I would go back and do that bit again and he would sometimes chuckle, a rumble deep in his chest and his jaw waving back and forth showed me he smiled. Sometimes he got me to go over bits again and again as a bit of fun I think. Job complete, I would carefully dismantle and clean the razor with its special miniature brush and show it to Grandpa for approval before putting it back together with small hands and sliding it back into its case.
Shaving an adult is a highly serious thing for a wee boy you know.
Being so close physically to him so often I remember every crease, nook and cranny of that old man's face. I remember the look in his eye as he watched me shave him or give him his tea in an odd china cup with a spout on one side and a lid on {In fact I have it still - just a magpie really!} He seemed able to look right into a wee boys heart. I remember his skin, his hair and his smell; how his face felt as small hands patted after-shave on; how he would try and hold me as I reached across him at the limit of my balance as I shaved him; how he would wince if I fed him tea that was too hot. I would sometimes lie on Grannies bed across the room from him and we would read silently together, him with a book on a darkwood frame, beautiful and specially made for him by one of my uncles, and me with my book propped on bare knees.
I remember spending a night, being very young and sleeping in Grannies bed, in the same room as Gran'pa, and hearing him moan and occasionally shriek during the night until Gran got out of bed and went across to murmur something to him for an unknown while before coming back to bed with a quiet but commanding "Now, now, you. Back to sleep. Nothing to worry you here. Just Gran'pa dreaming. Just a dream," as she got back into bed herself.
And thats why I found myself thinking of him and of years past on Monday night and silently raising a glass in that wood panelled dining room of the Barns Ness Hotel.
