THE FIRST CHAPTER OF MY NEXT BOOK (COMMENTS WELCOMED)

            A cheer rose on the crowded deck as the English coast came in to view in the cold January morning. The troop ship Adriana had set sail from the quay side at the French port of Le-Harve, as darkness fell the previous night. They had squeezed as many men on to its decks and holds as possible. It was over at last, the prime minister promised them they were coming home to a land fit for heroes; the armistice had been signed two months ago, now the problem of repatriating millions men to both sides of the world was a logistical nightmare. He had spent the last four years in the trenches of France, when he enlisted at seventeen they were told it would all be over by Christmas. The last two months had been a frustrating wait for the men of The City of Glasgow Battalion, Highland Light Infantry. Tomorrow, tomorrow, you leave tomorrow they were told over and over, now they actually were on their way. They were told they were returning to a land fit for heroes. As they tied the hawsers in Pembroke docks lines of motorised and horse drawn red crossed ambulances stood row up on row waiting to take the wounded men from the Fourteenth Welsh Regiment. He watched is silence as they disembarked, stretcher after stretcher, men on crutches missing limbs, others armless, rows of head bandaged blinded hands on the shoulders of the man in front. When the cargo of human misery had been unloaded the Adriana sailed into the Bristol Channel. As Swansea came in to view he could see the crowds that lined the quays waving their red white and blue flags, a band playing, as the troops marched down the gangways at mid-ships and stern. As they marched off the quay in formation, through the cheering crowds, as steam belched from the twin horns on the Adrian’s funnel and slipped her mooring ropes, and steamed back in to the main channel and headed back towards the open sea. The process was repeated further north when the men of the Kings Liverpool Regiment disembarked, the wounded and maimed were fed to the ambulances waiting in the docks at Bootle and the able-bodied soldiers further up the Mersey in front of the Liverpool in front of the Liver building where they marched off with bands playing and crowds cheering. She slipped her moorings for the last leg of their journey north to the Clyde nosing her way in to the Irish sea she started to plough through the increasing swell stirred by a stiff north-westerly wind sending sheets of white spray over her bows each time she crested a wave the decks were less crowded and he sat on top of a canvas covered forward deck hatch with his back resting on the rust scared paint work of the old ship the spray from her bows were a fine mist which seemed to wash away the horrors of the last four years  he first saw action at the battle of Ypres in April nineteen fifteen, and the deadly effects of Phosgene gas men chocked as the gas seeped in to the trenches. His regiment had been decimated the ones returning with him contained very few of the original men who had left Glasgow with him. They had fought in many of the major battles of the campaign and some of the lesser known, but all were just as bloody and brutal. The true carnage came in the major battles, Loos, Verdun, Somme, and Passchendaele. Their world was a broken place, everything broken and smashed, death was never far away it was soaked into the earth they walked and slept on; it was in the air they breathed. The consistent scratching at the body lice on their unwashed uniforms gave them no rest when the guns stopped in the rat infested trenches. As the sun slipped below the horizon a stiff breeze blew chilling him as he pulled up the collar of his great coat around his neck and the Adriana started to pitch and roll. He made his way below decks where the holds of the ship had been converted to makeshift dormitories; the wooden bunk beds had been constructed in rows. The air was a nauseating a mixture of damp, sweat, chloroform and morphine, but he was exhausted. He stretched out to his full five feet eight; it felt good as on the journey from France, what sleep he had managed was in a sitting position on the crowded deck. He slept soundly on the bare wooden bunk, the engines thundering rhythm nursing him as he slept using his kitbag served as a pillow. Bread spread with dripping and a mug of hot tea sweetened by condensed milk constituted breakfast. He sat on a hatch cover in the clear cold air, the enamel mug held in both hands to retain what heat he could from the mug the winds had died during the night to a gentle breeze as he watched as the Ailsa Craig slipped past with the isles of Bute and Arran in the distance ahead his memory slipped back to  the outward journey three years previously and the boat load of men full of excitement mixed with trepidation after all they had been told it would  all be over by Christmas At Greenock the wounded and maimed were disembarked in the same manner as before, but this time it was more pungent to those who watched in silence, this was their regiment, their comrades. As the Adriana made her way up stream on the River Clyde, Dumbarton Castle stood high on its moss covered rocky perch its grey granite walls framed by the green moss and a pale blue sky. A mantle of iodine coloured smoke shrouded the city in the in the distance with smoke from the thousands of coal fires and factory chimneys in the city. The shipyards could be heard before they came in to view under the towering cranes men still hammered on the steel hulls sending home the rivets of ships yet to start their journeys to the four corners of the earth. It was finally over, it had ended, what had started out in nineteen fourteen it was known as the big adventure.

 

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