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(As told to me by my father, James McQuarrie.)

My father, James McQuarrie, told me the story that follows of his experiences of World War Two. A joiner by trade, he was a private in the 5th King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB), a territorial unit with a drill hall in Gatehouse, Scotland. He died in 1998, leaving a family of eight.

The King’s Own Scottish Borderers evolved from Levens Regiment, raised to defend Edinburgh from Jacobite Viscount ‘Bonnie’ Dundee in March 1689. The 4th and 5th battalions were Territorial Army (TA) units that recruited in the south of Scotland, from Berwick on Tweed in the east to Stranraer in the west. These were part of the 52nd Lowland Division, 155th Infantry Brigade. The 4th (Border Battalion) had its HQ in Galashiels, and the 5th (Dumfries and Galloway) HQ was in Dumfries.

The 5th had evolved from the Dumfries Volunteers and the Galloway Rifles, with detachments in Dumfriesshire, A and D companies; B Company was in Wigtownshire and C Company in Kirkcudbright. C Company HQ was at the drill hall in Kirkcudbright. Detachments had drill halls at Castle Douglas, Dalbeattie and Gatehouse of Fleet.

James McQuarrie’s war

Three days before war broke out, I was working at Lairdmannoch Loch with Jim Glover. We were painting and repairing the small rowing boats used for fishing on the loch.

At dinnertime we went down to the big house to eat our piece. While we were there we heard over the radio that all territorials were to report immediately to their drill hall. Out of the five of us who had joined two years earlier, I was the only one left.

I said cheerio to Jim and set off for home on my bike to Twynholm, near Kirkcudbright.

Joining the TA in 1937

I had joined the TA in 1937, because they were going to the Isle of Man for their annual summer camp. It was too good a chance to miss a free holiday. We got a boat at Stranraer harbour to the Isle of Man. As we were sailing down past the Mull of Galloway, it started to blow up a little bit.

It had got quite rough when lunch was announced, and there were not many takers. I too had started to feel a little queasy. I decided that if I were going to be sick I would be better to have something in me with which to be sick, so I went and had some tomato soup. I felt great after it and have never forgotten that lesson.

Reporting for duty

I reported to the drill hall in Gatehouse that afternoon along with the rest of the lads. We were told that a bus would pick us up on Sunday at 11am to take us to Dumfries. I played football for the Saints on the Saturday as usual and on the Sunday morning went to Gatehouse, where the bus picked us up as promised and off we went.

As the bus went by the Star Inn in Twynholm, Miss Carter, Mrs Lamont and my grandfather were standing outside wiping their eyes with their hankies. I wondered what was wrong with them.

Billeted at Rosefield Mills

We were billeted at Rosefield Mills in Dumfries for a week to get kitted out. The following week we were spread around the Forth Bridge. Two companies were in Winchburgh, with the other two in Kirkliston. HQ was in South Queensferry. I was with C Company in Winchburgh and billeted with Snub Hay in a Mr and Mrs Cherry’s house — until Snub peed the bed. After that he slept in the guardroom.

Mr Cherry took me down the shale mines, where he worked. I was never as glad to get out of anywhere as out of there. If that was a low point, one of the high points was the time I met Wullie Thornton, who was just 17 and had just signed for Glasgow Rangers football club. Another highlight was watching the first air raid, on 16 October 1939, on the Forth Bridge. One of the pilots was Pat Gifford from Castle Douglas, who was later killed in action.

Breakfast with frost

We did different guard duties during the time we were there, the first at Pitreavie Castle, near Dunfermline, then the RAF station at Inverkeithing. We also erected barbed wire around Turnhouse Aerodrome, Edinburgh, where the Spitfires were stationed.

The last place we went was the ammo dump at Kincardine on the Forth. That was in the beginning of December, and we lived in tents. When we went for breakfast in the mornings the tables were set up outside in the open and were white with frost. On each table was a tin of pilchards. That was our breakfast. I don’t think one tin was ever opened.

Back to Dumfries for Christmas

We moved back to Dumfries before Christmas and went on seven days’ leave. In the New Year we had a very heavy snowfall, and I managed to stretch my leave to 14 days. I told them I couldn’t get from Borgue to Kirkcudbright, because all the roads were blocked.

I got away with it as most of the battalion had been clearing snow from the railway between Dalbeattie and Dumfries. The snowdrifts were so high that the diggers had hung their jackets on top of the telegraph poles.

Reorganised battalion

The battalion was undergoing reorganisation. A new unit, S Company, was set up, and all the tradesmen were brought into it from the pioneer platoon. Under its umbrella was the mortar platoon, the carrier platoon (no carriers), signals platoon and so on.

We also got two or three new intakes, one from the Edinburgh area, one from Glasgow and a lot from Yorkshire. I think the Yorkshire men were wondering what had hit them. I don’t think they had heard bagpipes before, but they soon settled in and made friends.

One of the new men was a plumber called Bill Hall. He’d been nearly 40 when he volunteered so he wasn’t fussy about which regiment he joined. He looked just like a cartoon character of the day ‘Old Bill’, so he was called that during the whole war. He and I were good friends.

Porridge with syrup

We stayed at Dumfries for three months then moved to Dorset, to Milburn Port, a small village near Sherbourne. The English regiment before us had left us their cooks to make our breakfast. It was the first and last time I tasted porridge made with syrup.

Where we were stationed there was a big house, possibly Vern House, with a hutted camp all around it. It was all lit by a carbide-gas plant that must have used tons of carbide. A man by the name of Stewart was put in charge, because he used to work in the gas works at Castle Douglas. For ever after he was called ‘Stinky’.

A rainy night

One night Paddy Downs, a blacksmith from Dalbeattie, went with me to look around the village. There wasn’t much to see except a pub. The beer there was sixpence a pint, but the scrumpy was only thrupence, so we each had two pints of scrumpy.

About one o’clock in the morning the whole hut was awakened by someone complaining of a soaking. A window must have been left open, he thought, and the rain had come in. He went back to sleep soon enough, but when he went to put his boots on in the morning, they were full of water.

Of course, what had happened was that Paddy had got up in the night, bursting for a pee. He’d gone to what he believed to be the door and urinated. But it wasn’t a door — it was a window, the one beneath which the fellow who’d got the soaking was sleeping. Paddy had peed over him and filled his boots.

There were other amusing moments, such as happened one Sunday morning. On going to church parade the battalion was being led along the road by the second in command. Major Johnston (from Amsfield Towers, Dumfries), when it came to a Y-junction. The left fork went to the church, the right to Sherbourne. The major went to the right, and the pipe band and the battalion to the left. The major was on his own.

Post-Dunkirk turmoil

About the beginning of May we moved to Kingsclere, near Newbury, where we were billeted in racing stables. We didn’t know what was going on at the time, but it was just after Dunkirk, and the army was regrouping. Everything was in turmoil. It soon became clear that we were going to France.

We were each issued with five rounds of ammunition, though, for some reason, the officers got seven rounds apiece. We arrived at Southampton one evening and boarded one of the requisitioned Isle of Man ferries. Most of us lay on the deck waiting for darkness and trying to get some sleep.

On sailing after dark we joined up with another convoy off the Isle of Wight. We heard a rumour going round that Churchill was on a ship in our convoy, going to France to see Pétain. I’m sure he had better accommodation than ours.

On guard with no ammo

We disembarked at St Malo on 13 June and started marching. We had no idea where we were going and were never told anything. We marched along those long, straight roads. It was always a relief to see a corner coming up, until we were round it only to find another great, long straight.

We stopped in a field that was surrounded by the trees of Domfort Forest, where we were to set up a bivouac that night. When we had settled in, a chap from Castle Douglas, Joe Fletcher (a bookmaker in later life), and I were taken to a crossroads and given an anti-tank rifle. We were told anything coming down the road was to be fired on.

After a while Joe asked if I had ever fired the thing, because he hadn’t. I said I’d never seen it before and had no idea how it worked, but not to worry because we had no ammunition for it. However, we survived the night without needing it.

No training in map reading

We were there for two or three days before we left by train. We had no idea of where we were, or where we had been, and knew only that the train was going to Paris. It stopped at a small village station, where civilians were hanging around. We tried to scrounge cigarettes from them, and I remember those fags tasted awful.

We got off the train not long after that stop and set out marching in our company. We were each to go a different way, and the plan was to meet up again at a certain map reference on a specific day. We all made it except A Company, who got lost after being misdirected by fifth columnists and then got caught in a German ambush. Some were killed and wounded, and the rest taken prisoner. None of the officers had been trained in map reading, only in finding unpolished brasses, something at which they were good.

Last unit out of France

We were told that the division was to be evacuated. Our battalion had been given the honour of fighting a rearguard action — some honour. We made our way to Cherbourg and arrived at the height of the evacuation. The harbour was littered with hundreds of lorries, trucks and ambulances, all ablaze in an attempt to stop the Germans using them. Our quartermaster’s moaning about the loss of good ground sheets became a standing joke after that.

Only one ship, the SS Manxman, was left in the harbour. This was the ship that would take us to Southampton. We were the last unit to leave France in 1940, on 18 June.

We learnt later that the divisional commander had been ordered to stay and fight to the last man. Considering it suicide to do so, he had refused. The order had been part of an attempt to reinforce a French line of defence between the Somme and the Aisne rivers with two divisions, but the line had fallen before they could reach it.

Read part 2 of this story.

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