4th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders
Lachie Gallie’s story has been compiled from information provided by his wife, Irene Gallie.
Lachie Gallie’s story has been compiled from information provided by his wife, Irene Gallie.
Lachlan “Lachie” Gallie was born in Tain on 25 August 1919. He attended Tain Public School, now Tain Public School, and Tain Royal Academy before joining D. Mackenzie & Son as an apprentice joiner. A keen drummer with Tain Pipe Band, in May 1939 he joined the local Territorial Army unit, the 4th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders.
On 1 September 1939 Lachie was called up for service. At the time he had been working at Suilven on Scotsburn Road. He was initially billeted in the old distillery at Dingwall before moving south for training at Inkerman Barracks, Woking, and later Bordon. In late January 1940 he was sent to France.
Lachie initially served near Metz on the Maginot Line. He was also a member of the Seaforth Highlanders’ Pipe Band, which, together with other bands of the 51st Highland Division, played in various French towns.
Following the German offensive in May 1940, the division was drawn into heavy fighting. Lachie remembered particularly the fighting around Abbeville, where there were many casualties. As the British and French forces withdrew, the Highland Division fought a rearguard action until it was surrounded at St Valery-en-Caux. Lachie was captured on 12 June 1940.
There followed a long march through northern France and Belgium towards the Rhine, with very little food. Lachie was among the prisoners crammed into the hold of a coal barge for a journey lasting three or four days. They were then packed into cattle trucks and transported eastwards in intense heat.
Eventually he arrived at Posen, now Poznań in Poland, where he was given a prisoner-of-war number and held at Stalag XXI-D.
His first work as a prisoner involved repairing tram lines damaged during the German invasion of Poland. Because Lachie was a trained joiner, he was later employed on building work, including the conversion of a monastery into a hospital for prisoners of war. During his captivity he worked in several places in occupied Poland, including Kraków and a steelworks.
Lachie saw only one other Seaforth from Tain during his years as a prisoner. At Posen he encountered Leo Robertson, another Tain man.
In January 1945, as the Soviet armies advanced from the east, the prisoners were forced to march westwards through snow and severe frost. The march continued for more than three months, taking them through Czechoslovakia and eventually to Regensburg in Germany.
There Lachie was finally liberated by American forces.
His journey home was almost as remarkable. Packed into the bomb bay of a Halifax bomber, he was flown back to Britain, arriving at Haywards Heath before eventually making his way home to Tain.
After nearly six years away, Lachie Gallie had survived the fall of France, almost five years as a prisoner of war and the terrible winter marches of 1945.
He died on 29 December 2000, aged 81.