Perspective

It was an entry by Indigo [rdautumnsage] that prompted me to tell this story, which has only the most tenuous of bearing on her painful story.

In August 1914, a young woman in the island here got married. Immediately afterwards, her new husband went out to sea for the fishing. He would be back after a week or two. History intervened, and war was declared. The hubby was a naval reservist and when he reached port, orders were there for him to proceed to the Depot in England for training and deployment.

It is late 1918. The Armistice has been signed, and the boys are coming home. The young man in our story has been through years in the trenches, and has witnessed horrors beyond description. It has aged him decades. He returns to Stornoway and goes to see his bride. Who gives him a tongue-lashing for leaving her in the lurch for 4 years, without so much as a word on being called up. He stares at her blankly, numbly. He looks gaunt and pale, a shadow from the handsome young man that wed the young woman four long years ago. She is angry, at being cheated out of a wedded life of bliss for 4 years. She is angry, that he doesn't understand.

Fast forward to the 1970s. The young woman is now ancient in years, and her husband has passed away. The woman is wracked by guilt, over the way she treated her other half when he returned from the Great War. She now understands, having seen boys return from the Second War in 1945, what had happened. And she feels dreadful over her own erstwhile selfishness.