spring tides â the same tides which washed the earth floors of some Balgarva houses â crept in through salt marshes through the lowest croftland, until the whole small township was surrounded for a few hours by a semi-circle of brackish sea.
Cut off by the tide or not, Balgarva was much closer to the island of Benbecula than to most of the rest of South Uist. The MacPhee family croft looked at Benbecula over two miles of white dunes, beaches and rolling sea. Within 40 years bridges and causeways would connect South Uist to Benbecula and Benbecula to North Uist. But in the 1920s the three islands were still separated by broad and perilous tidal strands. A child could look from Balgarva at the shimmering sands of Benbecula, but never be allowed to walk there, not even when the emergence of a certain reef from the sea in front of his house indicated that the tide had fallen far enough to make the strand fordable on foot.
âIt was a very sad, black place when they arrived in the early 1920s,â a relative would say. The Great War had taken a heavy toll from the Uists. Before the war some 9,000 people lived in the chain of smaller and larger islands that ran from Berneray through North Uist to Grimsay, Benbecula, Fladda, South Uist and Eriskay. Between 1914 and 1918 they lost 372 men on the battlefields of Loos and Ypres and in the ships of the merchant marine. It was a disproportionate sacrifice. On average, 2.2 per cent of the population of the whole of the United Kingdom was killed in the First World War. But 4.1 per cent of the people of Uist died. That figure represented over 8 per cent of the male population of the islands, and by further extrapolation meant that perhaps one-sixth of the young and early middle-aged men of Uist were lost.
Eleven of the Uist dead had been serving with the Lovat Scouts. It was of equal relevance to the MacPhee family that, as well as Angus and Archibald Bowie, no fewer than 30 of the fallen were from the district of Iochdar. Almost all of the Iochdar boys had, like Angus and Archibald, died asinfantrymen on the Western Front. Most of them, unlike Angus and Archibald, lost their lives at the Battle of Loos in the autumn of 1915. âTheir colonel in the Cameron Highlanders,â said Father Michael MacDonald of Bornish in South Uist, âwas the mainland landowner Cameron of Locheil, whom they blamed for the slaughter. After the end of the war, in the 1920s, the same Cameron of Locheil (Domnhall Dubh) was invited to unveil the war memorials at North Uist and Benbecula, but the people of South Uist refused to have him perform the unveiling ceremony at their own memorial on Carishival above Bornish. Instead, they asked a local woman, Bean Thormaid Bhain from Kilaulay in Iochdar, to carry out the task as she had lost two sons in the war.â
There was a further cost, which many at that time and later preferred to ignore. More than one in every hundred members of the British Armed Forces in the First World War, 75,000 men, âwere pensioned for mental and nervous diseasesâ. As late as 1922, 10,000 of those servicemen were still in asylums or hospitals. The effect was discernible even in the remotest parts of the kingdom, like a slight surge of the tide from a distant tsunami. During the war years of 1914 to 1918 the number of people admitted to the single lunatic asylum in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland jumped by 6 per cent, before falling again in the 1920s.
Not a crofthouse was untouched by injury or death. The loss of so many young men had a debilitating effect beyond their individual tragedies. It meant that almost 400 Uist women were either widowed or were robbed of a prospective husband. It was neither unusual nor coincidental that in the first half of the twentieth century two of Angus MacPheeâs three sisters left the islands to marry and settle far away inEngland. The Great War stole hundreds of families from the islands. Their population,
Cut off by the tide or not, Balgarva was much closer to the island of Benbecula than to most of the rest of South Uist. The MacPhee family croft looked at Benbecula over two miles of white dunes, beaches and rolling sea. Within 40 years bridges and causeways would connect South Uist to Benbecula and Benbecula to North Uist. But in the 1920s the three islands were still separated by broad and perilous tidal strands. A child could look from Balgarva at the shimmering sands of Benbecula, but never be allowed to walk there, not even when the emergence of a certain reef from the sea in front of his house indicated that the tide had fallen far enough to make the strand fordable on foot.
âIt was a very sad, black place when they arrived in the early 1920s,â a relative would say. The Great War had taken a heavy toll from the Uists. Before the war some 9,000 people lived in the chain of smaller and larger islands that ran from Berneray through North Uist to Grimsay, Benbecula, Fladda, South Uist and Eriskay. Between 1914 and 1918 they lost 372 men on the battlefields of Loos and Ypres and in the ships of the merchant marine. It was a disproportionate sacrifice. On average, 2.2 per cent of the population of the whole of the United Kingdom was killed in the First World War. But 4.1 per cent of the people of Uist died. That figure represented over 8 per cent of the male population of the islands, and by further extrapolation meant that perhaps one-sixth of the young and early middle-aged men of Uist were lost.
Eleven of the Uist dead had been serving with the Lovat Scouts. It was of equal relevance to the MacPhee family that, as well as Angus and Archibald Bowie, no fewer than 30 of the fallen were from the district of Iochdar. Almost all of the Iochdar boys had, like Angus and Archibald, died asinfantrymen on the Western Front. Most of them, unlike Angus and Archibald, lost their lives at the Battle of Loos in the autumn of 1915. âTheir colonel in the Cameron Highlanders,â said Father Michael MacDonald of Bornish in South Uist, âwas the mainland landowner Cameron of Locheil, whom they blamed for the slaughter. After the end of the war, in the 1920s, the same Cameron of Locheil (Domnhall Dubh) was invited to unveil the war memorials at North Uist and Benbecula, but the people of South Uist refused to have him perform the unveiling ceremony at their own memorial on Carishival above Bornish. Instead, they asked a local woman, Bean Thormaid Bhain from Kilaulay in Iochdar, to carry out the task as she had lost two sons in the war.â
There was a further cost, which many at that time and later preferred to ignore. More than one in every hundred members of the British Armed Forces in the First World War, 75,000 men, âwere pensioned for mental and nervous diseasesâ. As late as 1922, 10,000 of those servicemen were still in asylums or hospitals. The effect was discernible even in the remotest parts of the kingdom, like a slight surge of the tide from a distant tsunami. During the war years of 1914 to 1918 the number of people admitted to the single lunatic asylum in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland jumped by 6 per cent, before falling again in the 1920s.
Not a crofthouse was untouched by injury or death. The loss of so many young men had a debilitating effect beyond their individual tragedies. It meant that almost 400 Uist women were either widowed or were robbed of a prospective husband. It was neither unusual nor coincidental that in the first half of the twentieth century two of Angus MacPheeâs three sisters left the islands to marry and settle far away inEngland. The Great War stole hundreds of families from the islands. Their population,
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