HORIZONS OF WAR AND PEACE
As the mist rolls back the horizon resolves into a fine dark line between muted grey and milky green. There is a sense of peace here; yet this place knows the twin traumas of weather and war.
Gazing out past the headland I fancy I see human faces, at least three, forehead to chin profiled against sea and sky. Their brows are heavy and their features grim, unsurprising since they stare west along the coast to where, on a winter’s night during WW2, the SS William Welch was wrecked in a ferocious storm. A bitter irony, for just around this headland, whose name Rubha nan Sasan translates as “Wild Promontory” lay the safe anchorage of Loch Ewe.
On the rocky shore beneath the set stone faces a glimmer of sun highlights wartime remains - footings of a brick-built structure that once blocked the view, and everywhere shattered concrete slabs with ceramic shards of pipes, once draining out to sea. It will be many more years yet before the lichens that adorn the natural rounded rocks with colour soften the rough edges of these broken, bleached conglomerates.
Rubha nan Sasan is now home only to the sheep grazing among the derelict wartime installations, where once men of the Cove Battery were stationed to keep watch and defend the entrance to Loch Ewe. From here the Arctic Convoys gathered before setting out to supply war-torn Russia.
I take shelter from a shower of hail among crumbling concrete structures weeping in the wet. Steps climb through overgrowing grass into buildings with no doors or walls and up to the waterlogged foundations of abandoned observation posts.
Beside the highest lookout, with views to the north, west and east, a memorial stands with its back to the weather and the history of war. It’s there to honour all those who lost their lives serving in the Arctic Convoys.
Turning my back also I follow their gaze to the south, towards clearing skies and the hope of safe horizons.
