With the Scottish Regiments at the Front

by Evelyn Charles Vivian

The campaign in Flanders in 1794 and the following year gave to the regiment the "red hackle" that is still worn in the full-dress feather bonnet. Again the Black Watch went to the front for the Egyptian campaign of 1800, and at Alexandria Sir Ralph Abercromby called on the Highlanders for the effort that won the battle. The next great event in the history of the regiment was Corunna, where Sir John Moore bade the Highlanders "Remember Egypt!" On to the siege of Toulouse the Black Watch took their part in all fighting that was to be had, and at Toulouse itself they lost over 300 officers and men in driving back the French Army into the city.

Just on 300 more officers and men fell in the three days' fighting of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, and the Royal Highlanders were mentioned specially in dispatches by the Duke of Wellington—an honour accorded to only four of the regiments that took part in the final overthrow of Napoleon. From then on to the middle of the nineteenth century the life of the regiment was uneventful, for Europe slept, and it did not fall to the Black Watch to engage in the little frontier and colonial wars of the Empire.

But 1854 brought the Crimean War, and the Royal Highlanders took the field again as the senior regiment of Sir Colin Campbell's famous Highland Brigade. The brigade took part in the charge on the heights of the Alma, and was also in at the taking of Sevastopol on the 8th of September, 1855. The end of this war brought but little respite, for under their old chief, Sir Colin Campbell, the regiment took part in the suppression of the Indian Mutiny. The battle of Cawnpur, the siege and capture of Lucknow, and the battle of Bareilly, found the Royal Highlanders well to the front, and the name "Lucknow" is borne on the colours of the regiment. A sculptured tablet in Dunkeld Cathedral commemorates the names of those of the Black Watch who fell in the Mutiny.

In the Ashanti War the Black Watch took the leading and most conspicuous part, and shared in the capture and burning of Kumasi. Then, in 1882, the regiment went to Egypt to take part in the storming of the entrenchments at Tel-el-Kebir. At Suakim, El Teb, and Tamai, such was the conduct of the regiment that Lord Wolseley sent them a telegram of congratulation, and in 1884 the first battalion went up the Nile to the battle of Kirbekan.

Then, in 1899, the second battalion went out to South Africa as part of the ill-fated Highland Brigade under General Wauchope. On the night of Sunday, the 10th of December, in that first year of the Boer war, the Black Watch led the brigade in the memorable attack at Magersfontein. When the inferno of fire and barbed wire stopped the advance of the brigade, no less than 600 Highlanders fell, killed and wounded, including Wauchope himself. Throughout the Monday the survivors of three companies of the Black Watch held to their places in front of the Boer trenches and entanglements, while the remainder of the men of the battalion were engaged in attempting to turn the flank of the Boer position; but at nightfall it was found that the position was too strong, and the troops were drawn back. As already remarked, the brigade lost 600 in killed and wounded, and of these more than half were men of the Black Watch. In a little more than two months the survivors of the battalion had their revenge at Paardeberg, when Cronje was forced to surrender with 4,000 men. Here, again, the losses of the Black Watch amounted to 90 casualties among officers and men.

The first battalion did not come in for the earlier fighting in South Africa, but arrived in the country in time to take part in the "drives" with which Lord Kitchener put an end to the campaign. Poplar Grove and Driefontein, Retief's Nek and the surrender of Prinsloo at Wittebergen, were mere incidents to the Black Watch after the terrible work of Magersfontein and Paardeberg, and the conduct of the regiment as a whole during the war may be judged from the fact that no less than thirteen medals for distinguished conduct were awarded to its non-commissioned officers and men.

As usual, the Black Watch were among the first regiments to take the field in the fighting in France, and they went up to Mons with the rest of the British troops who took part in the great retreat. Never during the whole of the South African campaign, said one man who had been through it, was anything experienced like the three engagements in which the Black Watch took part round Mons. The shell firing of the Germans was terrific, and the hastily constructed trenches of the British afforded very little protection against the German shell fire. Yet, though on the retreat the British troops had to undergo forced marches, some of them with very little food except such fruit as they could get by the way, they displayed splendid stamina and pluck, and the discipline maintained in this trying time, so far as the Royal Highlanders were concerned, was admirable. Even when the loss of officers was heaviest, movements were still carried through with parade-like precision and coolness.

When nearing Soissons in the course of the retreat, the Black Watch were the object of an encircling movement by the enemy, and while the regiment was cutting its way through to rejoin the rest of the brigade, Colonel Grant Duff gave his orders with bullets humming round him, and went up and down the line of his battalion looking after wounded men. With the aid of the 117th Battery of R.F.A. the Black Watch succeeded in rejoining their brigade with a loss of only four men.

The work of the early days is epitomised by a man of the first battalion of the regiment. "We went straight from Boulogne to Mons," he said, "and were one of the first British regiments to reach Mons. Neither of the opposing armies seemed to have a very good position there, but the number of the Germans was so great that we had no chance of holding on from the first. We were in hard fighting all day on the Monday, and as the French reinforcements which we were expecting had not arrived by the Tuesday, we were given the order to retire.

"I should judge that, altogether, we retreated quite eighty miles. We passed through Cambrai, and halted at St. Quentin; the Germans, straining every nerve in the effort to get to Paris, had never been far behind us, and when we came to St. Quentin we got the word that we were to go into action again—and the men of the battalion were quite joyous at the prospect, for they had been none too well pleased at the continued retirement from the enemy. They started to get things ready with a will, and the engagement opened in lively fashion, both our artillery and the German going at it for all they were worth. We were in good skirmishing order, and under cover of our guns we kept on getting nearer and nearer to the enemy, till, when we were about a hundred yards of the German lines, orders were issued for a charge, and the Black Watch charged at the same time that the Scots Greys did. Not far from us the 9th Lancers and the Cameronians joined in the attack, and it was the finest sight I ever saw."