Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

occasional nugget for money. The poems of Robert Service described a life he had
known. It was hard and demanding. He was a quiet, reserved, modest man and I have
often regretted that he did not talk more about those interesting and exciting early years
of his life and that I did not or try to extract and capture his memories.
In the early years of World War I he volunteered for the army in Canada and joined
the Seaforth Highlanders. Expecting to see some fighting he was posted, as he said ‘to
guarding a bridge near Ottawa’ remote from possibility of action. He was intensely
patriotic and he wanted to join in the war with Germany. So he saw his Commanding
Officer and asked if he could be moved; his CO said he could have five weeks
compassionate leave, during which he worked his way across the North Atlantic on a
cattle-boat! Reaching Britain he joined the 50 th Division, the Northumberland Fusiliers.
He probably enlisted in the 7 th Nortumberland Fusilkers and was trained at Alnwick in
Northumberland. Then, aged 25 was posted to the trenches in l915. This was probably
the Second Battle of Ypres, April-May 1915. It was a war of attrition – trenches, barbed
wire, machine guns and mud; a war of attrition, entailing trench stalemate, advancing
and retreating across open country. Poison gas and tanks came into play. It was a
vicious battle. And protracted, but not for Dad. After only a month in early winter, he
was shot in the thigh - one of the numerous appalling casualties in the Battle of the
Somme. As he lay in the mud of a shell crater in great pain, with other wounded and
dead, someone threw a greatcoat over him for comfort. Some time later stretcher-bearers
from that regiment came out to collect their wounded, and because my father was
covered by one of their great-coats he was brought in. His leg was amputated in a
forward field hospital on the battlefield, without anaesthetics, and he suffered greatly
then and in subsequent operations. I have often thought that but for that remote chance
there would have been no Dick Laws and I would not be writing this account.
Naturally, there are other chances that influence one's life, but to me this has always
seemed utterly critical. His fortitude was an example that influenced me when I found
myself in difficult situations - thankfully none remotely like his.
My mother had a much more normal early life as the daughter of a middle-class
family. She was born in Jesmond, one of five children of Richard Heslop, a successful
builder and his wife. She was educated at Rutherford College Girls' School, Newcastle
and she met my father while serving as a nurse. Dad’s leg was cut off high up leaving
only a small stump, which used to intrigue me as a child, as did his artificial leg. It was
a contraption of aluminum alloy and leather, painted near flesh-colour, which fitted
onto the stump and was held on by a massive leather belt and straps. As he walked it
swung forward at each step and clicked straight. He always had to use a stick, or
crutches, and had a particularly hard time in winter when the ground was slippery. For
someone as active as he had been it was purgatory and a daily reminder of what might
have been; also the contraption didn't fit well and made visits by train down to
Roehampton, the specialist hospital near London, for treatment and re-fitting. It was
very evident that he was in pain for much of the time. The pain was in his mind too,
because he was confined to a desk by his job as clerk, then manager, of a firm of timber
importers situated on the quay-side at Newcastle.
As I have said my mother was a remarkable woman, producing and raising three
sons and sending them to Cambridge University. She had a little money of her own; her
father showed his disapproval of her marriage by cutting her off from his resources and
14