Hi all! Submitted Once Upon a Vet School #6: Fifty Miles at a Breath yesterday 
and today, I’m stuck into Somewhere Called Home, a novella about the early life of Scotty from A Long Trail Rolling in the Highlands of Scotland that I’ve already researched. It’s due… next week. Thankfully it’s meant to be short… but if you know me, you know what trouble I have with that concept. 🙂
REMEMBER, this is a first draft. I just wrote it tonight. Things may change before publishing.
Rob’s just survived Quatre Bras in Belgium and the fighting has stopped for the darkness… but the rain doesn’t. How like his Highland home.
Have a read…Â Enjoy.
Bored witless, Rob looked up from carving his third newt from the stick he’d picked up from the muddy road on their march toward Ostend, Belgium.
There would be some child needing a toy in this mess.
A woman, her kerchief and apron somehow white, walked from soldier to soldier, a basket of books on her arm.
“Voulez-vous un livre à lire?” she asked a Scot nearby.
“I don’t speak French, sorry, lass,” he mumbled, with a wince. “Now if you had one in Gaelic, I might manage, at a pinch.” He smiled at her and nodded his thanks, and she went on to the next man.
“J’aimerais un livre s’il vous plait,” Rob called out and she turned, her whole face lighting as she hurried toward him. She placed the basket before him as if it contained the holy grail, which at that moment seemed pretty close. To someone used to peaceful solitude, being part of the 93,000-odd soldiers assembled to fight Bony, losing himself in a book for a few hours until darkness fell, even in French, sounded like heaven on earth. She pointed out book after book, and he chose two that looked relatively easy to read. “Merci beaucoup,” he said.
“De rien,” she said, and moved on to the next man.
“Soldier,” a voice barked in his ear and Rob flinched, then glanced up to see an officer. He jumped to his feet as his eyes flicked to the officer’s insignia, but he didn’t recognize it.
“Sir,” he said, snapping the back of his fingers to his forehead.
“Is that a book I see in your hands, soldier?”
“It is, sir.”
“In French?”
Rob gulped. The last thing he wanted was to be taken in for a spy, but lying wouldn’t get him anywhere. “Yes, sir.”
“Come with me,” he barked, and led off at a trot.
The men around him stared. Rob shrugged at them, hoisted his pack to his back, and followed, hopping over resting soldiers, mess kits, and their packs while he struggled to keep up with the unladen officer, heart pounding in his chest at what awaited him.
After what seemed a mile, the officer stopped outside the Quartermaster’s tent and called for admittance. At a shout from inside, he glanced at me. “Stay right there,” he said, and disappeared behind the tent flap. Raised voices came from inside, then the flap was pulled aside. “Come in, soldier,” he said.
Three men sat at two desks, covered with paper covered in figures, receipts, journals, inkwells, nibs and blotters. They all froze as he entered the tent. “Do you speak French?” The biggest man asked.
“Oui, je parle français,” Rob said, “though with a terrible Scots accent, I was told by my tutor,” he said, and tried not to smile.
The rest of the men had no such compunction and looked at each other, wide grins growing on each of their faces as they turned back to me.
“What else do you do?”
“What do you need? My father was grooming me to be tacksman for the laird, so I learned French, German, mathematics, accounting, swordsmanship, and even a little English, on top of my Gaelic.”
“Why don’t these recruiters find people like you?” one of the men said. “We need you in here. We’ve lost our assistant Quartermaster and I’d like you to take his place.”
Rob blinked and shook his head, his thoughts whirling. “Of—of course,” he stuttered. The only thought was of thanks to his father for the education.
Life changed dramatically after that. I was assistant to the highest non commissioned officer in our regiment . I was given a decent place to sleep and supped with the clerks and Quartermaster, usually while we worked. And work, we did, as we moved through Ghent and on to Brussels. Supplying such a number of men, billeted throughout the city with not only their daily essentials, but with campaign necessaries of four days’ bread, camp-kettles, bill-hooks, and whatever else they might need was a full-time job for more than the men we had in the office. The inhabitants of Brussels treated our Highlanders with kindness and they often told me, in French, of their fondness for the well-behaved Scots when we were out requisitioning foodstuffs and bedding for the men.
One day, Colonel Cameron was invested with the Order of the Bath and fêted at a ball given by the Duke of Wellington that evening—when the alarm came. The men, billeted as they were on adjoining streets, were in their column in half an hour, with Cameron at their head.
The night and next day were a blur in Rob’s head. They marched at daybreak, but the requisitioning and orders didn’t stop just because they were on the road. Their journals and orders could be completed while sitting on boards across a supply wagon as it rumbled inexorably toward where Cameron’s army had heard Bony was massing his men.
In the early afternoon, we were fired upon, near the crossing of two main roads. The 92nd formed up in front of a big farmhouse and the Duke of Wellington and his staff dismounted in ahead of Rob’s wagon, near the center of the regiment. Rob and the Quartermaster somehow kept track of the ammunition and gear they handed out at top speed, as the enemy fire came closer and closer, then the ground shook with the hooves of a hundred cavalry horses, Rob wasn’t sure if they were French or Scottish, the shouting and the explosions on all sides rang in his head, then above it all, the duke calling out, “92nd, you must charge these fellows,” and the men bolted over the ditch and straight into the fleeing French. They kept at it, hotly engaging them until darkness stopped the fighting. The men returned, some shouting and joking that they’d shown those Frogs… until they heard of the loss of the brave Colonel Cameron.