Born in Beauly on 1/1/1916. Attended Beauly school for one day before moving with my parents and two elder sisters (Twins) to Tomich, Strathglass.(Ina and Jeannie).
My father worked in the timber trade, with Frank Sime and Wyllie,s timber merchants of the period 1920s to 1930s. My father was a Beauly man, his father I understand ran the Beauly ferry for many many years..I remember my Granny Michael very well, a small frail person, and always busy with her crochet needles.
My mother came from the Black Isle fishing village Avoch (Ach). Her maiden name was Patience and she had another two of a family, born at home, No. 10 Tomich, two more sisters, Marie and Amelia.
There was very little work in these days for school leavers but perhaps I was one of the lucky ones. During the shooting season of 1931 the Hallboy in the Affaric Lodge took ill and was sent home to England,I had his job a few seasons afterwards and this was my start in Affaric,. I progressed from Hallboy to hill ghillie on the Middle Beat with Stalker-Sandy MacKenzie.
After a few seasons, I, with others, was taken on much earlier in the year.
There was a very big mileage of hill paths in the forest, and that kept us busy until the start of the stag shooting. Affaric is a very large deer forest, the Eastern end at Benivean Bridge , the West End Ben Attow. On the home beat there are two of the highest hills north of the Caledonian Canal, Mam Soul and Carn Eighe, many times I lunched on their summits.
The shooting, in my time, was always taken by G.W.Swire of the Blue Funnel shipping line. There was always a great bunch of ghillies in Affaric and we had some great times, often cycling to the Cannich dances after our day on the hill, and arriving back in the early hours of the morning, just in time for a quick snack of oatmeal brose and a cup of tea , before setting sail up the loch for another day mountaineering.
Our Launch man was Willie Chisholm, many a fish we caught together. In the early thirties Willie was a sawmiller at Guisachan but unfortunately had an accident, had all the fingers and thumb of his right hand severed. I remembered the day it happened, we saw him being led through the village on his way to the Dr's  in Beauly, how he got there, I just don't know, nobody in these days owned a car that I can remember,there was just the Mail Coach run by Bob Robinson, one run a day to Beauly.
Our Ghillies in Affaric , Middle Beat were myself, Kenny MacColl, and Alistair MacLennan, Alistair was my partner in crime (so to speak.)
We fished together, went to dances together, got drunk together, poached together, and all the rest of it, and not surprisingly I eventually married one of his sisters, Ann, in the early years of the war 39-45, both in uniform, myself in the RAF and Ann in the ATS.
Alistair was called to re-enlist in the Lovat Scouts and went all through the war then, sadly he died quite a young man after demob, and is burried in Kilmorack Churchyard, Beauly.
I myself joined the RAF in April 1940, did the usual square bashing at Blackpool and Morecambe, afterwards taking a mechanics course, my first squadron was at Old Sarum, Salisbury, (B flight). Our flight commander was Flight Commander Bowen Davis, a great lad, I flew with him often on morning weather tests in Lysanders. We were Army Co op squadron.
I must now put on record that he certainly gave his life for his friends, it happened like this . We were doing night flying,and several of our rookie pilots were in the air somewhere over Salisbury Plain, a heavy air raid on Southampton started up and all airfield lights were blacked out, which naturally left our lads, who were up aloft, in a different way.