The opening chapters of the book deal with the outbreak of war and the patriotic fervour of those who complained that not enough men were enlisting. A favourite target of those who sought out shirkers were footballers and fans. There were calls for the game to be banned because it was a ‘miserable exhibition of blackguardism’ which kept fit men from the front where the regular Army was having a hard time of it. Alexander is fond of the telling anecdote – a good one here: recruiters turned out to a football match, only to find that the stadium was filled with men already in khaki, or old men, or young boys, or fit men employed in reserved occupations necessary to the war effort. Well, it was a daft time. He tells also of the man arrested for shooting down pigeons in Princes Street, convinced they were German birds carrying secret messages to the enemy. The spirit of wartime Edinburgh is wonderfully captured in these pages.

It was odd that the ‘Stoppers’ (those who wished to ban football for the duration) were so convinced that men were shirking the war, considering the colourful history of the city’s regiments, its associations with the territorial forces, and the number of men who had flocked to sign up, but convinced they were. Alexander skilfully weaves together the history of both the territorials and Heart of Midlothian FC (how the FC got its distinctive maroon shirt is a good tale) because very soon the two groups are to meet up in spectacular fashion when George McCrae sought permission to raise a city battalion.

McCrae is a fascinating character, and a man perhaps who could only have appeared at that period in time and in Scotland. Born the illegitimate son of a servant girl, he left school at 14 to become a messenger boy. In no time, he was managing the draper’s he worked for, and then setting up in business for himself with considerable success. He also entered local politics as a Liberal and was instrumental in several reforms to improve life in the city. He was a gracious and modest man: his warmth and kindliness come across strongly in Alexander’s account of him. He had many interests, including the Territorial Force. When he raised his battalion, many star players of the Hearts team signed up, and half the city’s fit men it seemed like, such was his charisma.

McCrae’s Battalion was formed by men from all walks of life: clerks, students, sportsmen, lawyers, doctors, labourers, artists, men hardly more than boys, men well past middle age who lied to get in. Alexander has painstakingly researched the men of that battalion and provided a snapshot of Kitchener’s volunteers, that body of men who were quite unlike the regular army in composition, and of a quite different mindset from the later recruits who were conscripted. Particular attention is paid to the Hearts FC men : Pat Crossan who claimed to be the handsomest man in the world (‘he could pass a ball but never pass a mirror’the legend went); sensible reliable Annan Ness – and a host of others: Wattie, Briggs, Ellis, men of great talent and ability and promise.

The year they joined up, Hearts FC was set fair to win the league, but their military training rather threw their game because they had to go on night route marches across the Pentlands in the fog and frost, and then turn out for the league games afterwards! The accounts of their training before they went to France are lively and emphasise their youth, and their innocence of what lay ahead. There were practical jokes galore in the barracks, fine times dodging military police, games, and bets and singalongs. They were boys on a spree, and we come to know them and like them in these stories. Alexander is a graceful writer with the gift of painting in miniature: he gives an account of the officers coming down the Mile on a frosty Hogmanay to first foot the men.

Was there a moment when the men felt the shadow of things to come? Perhaps there was : another vivid miniature was of the day they entrained for France. The crowds turned out to cheer them on, the men themselves cheered and then at the moment the train lurched into movement, a sudden silence fell…Alexander’s skill makes that a heart stopping moment.

McCrae’s battalion saw action at Contalmaison, Ypres and Arras – some of the bloodiest battlefields of the war. On the Somme, on July 1st, that blackest day in British military history, the battalion suffered agonising losses. Alexander’s account is among the most moving I have read, possibly because he piles anecdote upon anecdote without comment and lets the men speak for themselves. His descriptions of events are remarkably vivid, as they are for all the battles the battalion saw. Unforgettable is McCrae, that dignified old man, joining his men in the trenches and standing unflinching as the shell and shrapnel flew.

For Wilfred Owen, the poetry was in the pity of war. For Alexander, it might be said the pity is in the detail. Young men who wrote their last will and testament, or last messages home, on the inside cover of their paybooks. Someone’s copy of ‘Confessions of A Justified Sinner’, all bloody and muddy, was rescued from the battlefield Soldiers’ rough humour, and the soldier’s rough tenderness for his comrades is everywhere in these accounts. So too is almost unbelievable courage as battle fever took hold. What about the little soldier who charged the German lines screaming ‘You dirty bastards, we’re coming for you!’ and disappeared into the smoke and shell, never to be seen again? The randomness of death on those chaotic battlefields is stunning – one man came through a horrendous battle unscathed, only to be hit by a shell as he drank his tea in a reserve trench. Another man was sighted by a machine gunner and came zigzagging across No Man’s land, bullets zipping at his heels all the way, and survived unhurt. (He put his survival down to his rugby training and a dummy move!). Alexander records it all with an unsentimental eye which makes it all the more moving. There is a terrible sadness in the loss of all that talent and promise and it weaves its way through the book like a dark and melancholy thread.

By the end of the war, there were few of the battalion left alive and uninjured, and more were to die from wound related illnesses after the war. Alexander traced as many of the survivors’ histories as he could and he gives them here. One survivor killed himself in 1940, whilst another ‘reduced’ his age so that he could resume hostilities. Others went back to their professions or their labour and got on with life. But they didn’t forget. One woman remembers her father, a warm and cheerful man, who was subject to fits of depression around the beginning of July each year and used to lock himself in a room and cry.

George McCrae went on to involve himself in improving public housing. In an election campaign, his opponents started a whispering campaign against him, alleging that he mishandled the battalion and stayed safely behind the lines – all this was fiercely rebutted by his surviving men who held him in real respect and affection. But the story does show the shabbiness of politicians as does Edinburgh City Council’s refusal to fund the monument on the Somme to the fallen of Edinburgh. It was not until this year, after the publication of this book, that a monument was finally raised. Not before time, you’ll say, once you’ve read it.

Marion Arnott lives in Paisley, Scotland. She was winner of the Phillip Good Memorial Prize For Women's Fiction 1998, CWA Short Dagger 2001 and shortlisted for CWA Short Dagger 2002. Work has appeared in Scottish Child, West Coast, Solander Magazine, Peninsula , QWF, Hayakawa Mystery Magazine (Japan), Books Ireland, Northwords, Chapman, Crimewave, and Datlow and Winding's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volume 15. Her short story collection 'Sleepwalkers,' was published in August, 2003 by Elastic Press. To visit Marion's Showcase on this website, click here

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.