On Aug. 11th, three days after the attack our brigade was camped under the trees beside a chateau which had been a German Divisional Headquarters on Aug. 8th, and was now ten miles behind our line. I remember it distinctly for that day, a Sunday, I had preached my farewell sermon to my battalion. I had been inveigled into asking for a recall to England. They said I needed a rest. Perhaps I did, and then at that time you couldn't tell how much longer the war was to last. If I had foreseen an armistice in twelve weeks I should have done differently. So I was to go to Blighty for a few months, my substitute had reported for duty and there was nothing for me to do but go.
A group of men sat around me beneath the trees, as I lingered that afternoon, chatting about odds and ends of things, leaving the subject that, I think, was uppermost in our minds pretty much untouched, for we were all loth to say good-bye. Somehow the talk turned to stories of clever camouflage suggested by some of our recent experiences and the boys told several good yarns. I outlined an old one I had heard my father tell of the arts of camouflage practised by Indians in his own soldier days in Upper Canada. This elicited enquiries about my father, and how he came to be soldiering in Canada so long ago. It was a story I knew well, and so it was easily told. These men were friends of mine, true and tried, and I knew they would understand and fill in from their hearts the simple outline I gave them of my father's life.
* * * * *
Ever since I can remember, Edinburgh has been to me the fairest city in the world. I am Canadian-born, my mother also, but my father was an Edinburgh man, and my earliest memories are filled with word-pictures of that city drawn in warm tones of affection by a home-sick Scot. Many an hour have I sat at my father's feet, as we gathered around the fire of a winter's evening, listening to his stories. He had a wide range of Indian and soldier anecdotes so dear to a boy's heart, but none of them live so clearly in my recollection as those he had to tell of his birth-place. Long before I knew what geography was I had a fairly intimate knowledge of Edinburgh. Calton Hill, Arthur's Seat, Samson's Ribs, Holyrood Palace, High Street and Princes Street, I had the right location and a true picture of them all. When boy-like I would be building forts with blocks or in the sand, they would always be called Edinburgh Castle.
I knew all his stories except one, and that one was his own life. I heard that too, at last, and it came about in this wise. An important registered letter used to come to father quarterly, containing his soldier's pension. Until I was well along in school I was not specially interested in the envelope or its contents, but one day I read the address as it lay near me on the table, and it was "559 Cpl. G. McDonald, R.C.R." Naturally I became curious. My father, George Pringle, was getting George McDonald's letter and money. My father was honest, I never, of course, questioned that. Still it was a puzzle to my boyish mind. He came into the room, saw what I was doing, and so I asked him to tell me about it. "It must look odd to you, my boy," he said, "and I've been waiting until you were old enough to hear and understand the explanation. To-night after supper, if no visitors come, I'll tell you the reason of it." That evening under the lamplight we gathered around his arm-chair and he told his own story.
"Long ago," he said, "when I was a boy, our family were living very happily in what was then one of the best parts of old Edinburgh. My father was a man of substance and gave us all a good schooling and a trade. Of my mother I shall only say that she was to me the most wonderful and the most beautiful woman in the world. I had a twin brother John and we were very much alike in appearance. When we were fourteen years old our mother died. We mourned as only boys of that age can mourn, with deep grief too poignant for words. Within three years father married again. Our stepmother was an excellent woman and kind to us, and I know now my father did right. But we couldn't bear to have anyone else in our own mother's place. Loyal in our love to her we grew embittered towards our father. There were no "words," but when about seventeen years old we ran away from home, tramped south to London, and there, being Edinburgh tradesmen, soon found work. A year or so and then we got an inkling that father had traced us. Determined not to go back we enlisted in the Rifle Brigade and to hide our identity gave our names as John and George McDonald, our mother's maiden name. You see where our hearts were. Within the year our unit left for Canada, and we had been in barracks at Halifax, Nova Scotia, only a few months when we were paraded one day before the commanding officer, Col. Lawrence. He took us into his own room and there he spoke to us as a friend. He had received a letter eloquent with a father's love for his two wandering laddies. Father had traced us by our Christian names, and our likeness to each other. I think, too, the name McDonald, which we thought would baffle him, only made him more certain. Col. Lawrence read the letter aloud to us, and it moved us deeply. Money enough was enclosed to buy our discharge and pay our passage home. The officer urged us to return. At first we were inclined to yield, but some dour devil of bitterness took control of our hearts and we said we would not go, would accept no money, and wished to have no further communication with our father. Such was the unrelenting reply the colonel would have to send back to Edinburgh. How many, many times has remorse punished me for that unkind decision. Yet we blindly thought that love and loyalty to the mother we had lost made it right that we should turn our backs on our father's outstretched arms. We never heard from him again, and we have lost all trace of our relatives in Scotland.
"You can easily construct the rest of my story. After serving some years more we left the army for a time. I was married to your mother, Mary Cowan, at Murray Harbor South, Prince Edward Island. Shortly after we re-enlisted under our army name in the Royal Canadian Rifles, then a newly organized regiment, with which I served until I finally gave up the soldier life, and settled in Galt under my right name. My service was sufficient to get me a medal and a pension. The pension comes addressed as you have seen, and the medal is similarly inscribed. It is the regimental number that identifies me and the money and medal are rightfully mine. But a thousand pensions can never ease my heart of regrets for the suffering we needlessly inflicted on our father who loved us and whom we loved."
* * * * *
This was the homely story told in my father's words to those kiltie lads that summer afternoon under the apple trees in an alien land. They listened and understood, for every true Scottish heart responds to these stories of our own folk and our homeland.
From the lone shieling of the misty island
Mountains divide them, and a waste of seas,
But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And they in dreams behold the Hebrides.