Brush with death proves an inspiration

As always, when I write about people in the arts, I leave critiques of their work to others who are much better qualified such as Professor Alan Riach who wrote an excellent piece about Linklater for The National in 2017. I will be quoting from it next week when I write more about his literary output, and the week after that, I will urge that after this 50th anniversary of his death on November 7, 1974, there should be a comprehensive re-examination of Linklater’s work and legacy with a view to informing more Scots about this wonderful writer.

We know a great many things about Linklater’s life because he wrote three volumes of memoirs, namely The Man On My Back (1941), A Year Of Space (1953), and Fanfare For A Tin Hat (1970), and other writers have given biographical details while Linklater’s own correspondence with the likes of Naomi Mitchison, William Roughead and Sir Compton Mackenzie are preserved in the archives of the National Library of Scotland.

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I will be sticking to the facts of Linklater’s life, not least because his son Magnus, former editor of The Scotsman, is still well capable of taking up the literary cudgels to defend his father’s reputation. Suffice it to say, I admire much of what Linklater did, especially his comedic satirical output of which the most famous works are Magnus Merriman and Private Angelo, the latter described by Alan Riach as “one of the finest novels to emerge from the Second World War” which was turned into a memorable film partly directed by and starring the great Peter Ustinov.

I do not know if it bothered such a Scottish patriot as Eric Robert Russell Linklater that he was actually born in Penarth, Wales on March 8, 1899. He tended to ignore that fact in later life and insisted upon being described as Orcadian.

His father Robert Baikie Linklater was a master mariner from Orkney, and his mother Mary Elizabeth née Young was also of Scottish ancestry and the daughter of a Swedish-born sea captain. Eric’s Orcadian and Scandinavian links would be important to him all his life.

Educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, Linklater was of that generation who heeded the call to arms in the 1914-18 “war to end all wars”, which, of course, it wasn’t.

According to his biographer Michael Parnell, the death of his father in 1916 inspired Linklater to join up, despite his mother’s opposition. Parnell said Linklater forged his documents to make him seem a year older and also forged a certificate about his sight – so much so that the bespectacled teenager ended up as sniper.

He joined the Black Watch in 1917 and was sent to the Western Front.

Life in the trenches as a sniper made a huge impression on him, as did the German bullet that him in the head.

Thanks to the Linklater family’s decision to donate Eric’s helmet – complete with entry and exit bullet holes – to the museum on Kirkwall, and to Magnus’s decision to write about it in The Orcadian, I can quote exactly what happened to Eric Linklater on that fateful day in April 1918, near the village of Voormezele in Flanders where the Black Watch were defending the line against the final “big push” of the German army.

He recalled in his memoir what took place as he and his colleagues retreated, and I think this might possibly be the best ever account of what it’s like to be shot: “I ran so very fast that, although I was the last by a long way to leave the trench, within two hundred yards, I had passed several of those who preceded me; including an officer who was looking back with an expression of reluctance that, in the circumstances, appeared strangely ill-timed.

“I continued to run til, in a mingling of righteous indignation and utter dismay, I felt on my head a blow of indescribable force. It was a bullet, and probably a machine-gun bullet; for the rifle fire of the German infantry was poor.

“When I recovered consciousness, the surrounding landscape appeared entirely empty. But I could not see very well, and perhaps I was mistaken. A few shots that were evidently hostile, gave me a rough direction, and with clumsy fingers, I took from a pocket in the lining of my tunic a little package of field dressings. I could not undo it, but stuck it whole on the back of my head, where I judged the wound to be, and kept it in position with my steel helmet, that a chin strap kept tightly on.

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“Scarcely had I made these arrangements when, my sight growing more foggy, I fell into a water-logged trench. It was deep and full to the brim, and the sides were so well revetted that I had great difficulty in getting out. I was nearly drowned, indeed, and lost my good rifle there. But the cold water revived me, and now my only feeling of discomfort was extreme weariness.

“So I threw off my equipment and my tunic, and found progress a little easier. Presently, after walking, as I thought for many miles, someone came to help me, and I saw a cluster of men in kilt and kilt-apron who looked familiar. I waved my hand to them. It was the very last, the ultimate remnant of the battalion, and already they were forming for the counter-attack.”

This was the original life-changing event, and perhaps it was this close encounter with his mortality that changed him, or perhaps like many who survived the war he just wanted to do something different, but having set out to study medicine at Aberdeen University, he switched to English literature, and seems to have been determined to make a living as a writer from the outset.

Find out next week how successful he became.