War

Red mountains of spent shale tower over the far end of the race track. There’s a faint taste of burning as you breathe in. Smoke drifts from the chimneys of the close by oil works. A patchwork of pit heads and connecting railway lines as far as the eyes can see. And it’s a grand view. It’s one that keeps us all in work.

Flags and bunting are waving along Main Street. The shops  and fourteen pubs – I’m sure that’s how many there are, maybe more – are set for a day of selling to the crowds that pour from the morning trains.  

It’s the Cauther Games. Relay races. Cycling. Highland dancing. Hop, step and leap. And the ‘old man’s race’.

I am here for the competition events, the half-mile and one-mile handicaps. I practice on the streets and roads around the village before and after work. I’m a joiner with the oil company. My brothers, all five of them, mine the shale. Johnny, the youngest, had the fingers of his right hand blown away by a faulty detonator. He is back at work a week later. If I was a miner I wouldn’t have the energy to run.

I easily come first in the half-mile and was just beaten to second place in the one mile. As the medals were being awarded their was a mighty clap of thunder and the heavens opened. We are all running now for shelter.

A week later the crowd was gathered again together at the station to wave goodbye to the army reservists as they left to join their regiments. I’ve not even had time to shave, I hear one of them shout as he kisses a girl and mounts the train. Next stop Germany, shouts another. And we cheer and we laugh. Arms and hands waive to and from windows as the engine gathers steam and pulls away. People hang around for a time before the noise subsides as we drifted off in small groups, up the hill and back into village.

The next khaki I see is at the oil works.

Early Monday morning. Soldiers are sent to guard the Navy Tank. Lots of rumours. ‘The Germans have landed on the east coast.’ ‘German soldiers are marching towards the village’. ‘They want the oil for their ships and will fight us for it.’ ‘Someone has been killed in Tarbrax’. ‘A German spy has been arrested at Harburn.’

A man is questioned by the police. He is a stranger from Edinburgh and is only visiting relatives.

A motor car, driven by a Captain Johnston, who delivers dispatches to his men to mobilise, kills a pedestrian in Tarbrax.

While we are all sitting at supper around the kitchen table, I read a letter in The Courier, from a Cauther woman who has been on holiday in Germany.

‘Once in Berlin, where the streets were always crowded with light-hearted townspeople, one felt the tension and dreadful meaning of war; soldiers everywhere; clusters of earnest faces; huge flourishing warehouses closed; sad farewells; and the cafes crowded and brilliant with a kind of hysterical levity. And the stations; immense impenetrable crowds pressed against the barriers and wept and waved farewell to the trains of soldiers that left for the boundaries. On the train to the coast passengers who had booked seats had to give them up to the German officers who were travelling eastwards. The excitement and war lust had passed, and the men seemed limp and downcast, despite their martial rig-out and shining helmets and glistening bayonets. In Berlin it was impossible to procure a good meal; it was forbidden to sell beer or alcohol, so that the soldiers might be fresh and ready for work. On the train there was indeed a dining car, but the provision stock was exhausted within an hour of leaving the capital; so it was a case of tightening our belts and waiting.’