A Land For Heros?
this is part of the first chapter of my second novel I am writing look out for my first coming soon available on Kebo Apple Ipod and Barns Noble titled The Broken bush
I
A cheer rose on the crowded deck as the English coast came in to view in the early morning light. The troop ship Adriana had left the quay side at the French port of Le-Harve, as darkness fell they previous night. They had squeezed as many men on its decks and holds as possible. It was over at last, they were old they were going home to a land fit for heroes; the armistice had been signed two months ago, now the problem of repatriating over a million 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 joined up at seventeen they were told it would all be over for Christmas. The last two weeks had been a frustrating wait for the men of The City of Glasgow Battalion, Highland Light Infantry. Tomorrow, tomorrow, you leave tomorrow, now they actually were on their way. As they tied the hawsers in Pembroke docks the lines of motorised and horse drawn red crossed ambulances stood row up on row waiting to take the wounded 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 We’ll Keep a Welcome in The Hillside, as the troops marched down the gangways at mid-ships and stern. As they marched off the quay in formation through the cheering crowds, The Adriana sounded her horn 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 bandsplaying and crowds cheering. The decks were less crowded and he lay on top of a canvas covered deck hatch in the late afternoon sun. He had been away from home for 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. The war had dragged for four years, and his regiment had been decimated the ones returning 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 some of them less known. The true carnage came in the major battles, Loos, Verdun, Somme, and Passchendaele. As the sun slipped below the horizon a stiff breeze blew tussling his short brown hair, 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. He stretched out to his full five feet eleven, it felt good as on the journey from France what sleep he got was in a sitting position on the crowded deck. He slept soundly on the bare wooden bunk, his kitbag served as a pillow, tea bread and butter constituted breakfast. He took his up on deck and watched as the Ailsa Craig slipped past with the isles of Bute and Arran in the distance ahead. 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. They watched as the Adriana made her way up stream on the River Clyde, sights most of them had heard of but never seen Helensburgh, Dumbarton Castle mounted high on its rocky perch. The shipyards could be heard before they came in to view under the towering cranes men still hammered and banged on the steel hulls of ships yet to start their journeys to the four corners of the world. It was finally, it had ended, what had started out in nineteen fourteen it was known as the big adventure, as he formed them up in front one of the Queens Dock warehouse sheds.
