With the Scottish Regiments at the Front

by Evelyn Charles Vivian

But, although senior in point of age, the Royal Scots is not "the right of the line" in the British Army. This proud distinction is held by the Royal Horse Artillery, which probably numbers as many Scotsmen in its ranks as men of any other nationality. The Artillery, however, knows no nationalities in its nomenclature. One is first a gunner, and then either English, Scotch, Welsh, or Irish—the guns count before territorial distinctions. Next to the R.H.A., if ever the line of the whole Army were formed, would come the Brigade of Guards, and here the Scots Guards find a place, very near the right of the line, when the length of that line is considered.

It is possible, to a certain extent, to trace the history of each unit of the Army, as far as the present European war is concerned, by means of the letters sent home by the men of each unit. Such histories are necessarily brief and scrappy, but they afford some idea of what the various regiments are doing on the field; and the object of this book is, to some extent, to show how each Scottish regiment has contributed to the glory of Scotland and the fame of the British Army since August of 1914. Some reference to the earlier exploits of Scots on other fields may perhaps be pardoned, for there are some stories—like that already quoted regarding the Duke of Marlborough—that never grow old.

Of the Scots Guards, few records have as yet come to hand, beyond those that are common knowledge. The regiment has nearly three hundred years of history, having been raised as the "Scots Fusilier Guards" in 1641. Nineteen years later they became the "Scots Guards," and in the closing years of the seventeenth century they fought in Flanders, subsequently serving with distinction under the Duke of Marlborough. From "Dettingen" through the Napoleonic and Crimean wars up to "Modder River" the battle honours on their colours range, for like the great majority of British regiments they had their share of South Africa in the last campaign there.

Personal records of their deeds in the early stages of this present war are scarce, but certain it is that there were Scots Guards at the battle of the Marne, although the official dispatches are chary of mentioning the names of regiments engaged in definite actions or at definite points. For, previously to the battle of the Marne, there was a Guardsman of Kilmarnock of whom a story is told. He was on duty with a comrade when two mounted men approached, and on challenging the riders the Scots found that one of them was a Uhlan—who made off with all speed. The Kilmarnock man advanced on the other rider, whom his comrade had covered with his rifle, but the horseman made a motion with his left hand toward his revolver. Thereupon the Kilmarnock man, being tall and powerfully built, struck out with his fist and knocked the man from his saddle, ascertaining subsequently that he was a German scout officer, and that he carried a diary which gave particulars of the movements of the brigade to which the Scots Guards were attached, from the time of its leaving Havre almost up to the time of the officer's capture. There were in the diary frequent allusions to "those hellish British"—which comment speaks for itself.

Later, along the position of the Aisne, the first battalion of the Guards were busy. On a certain Sunday afternoon the Guards and the Black Watch were in the thick of the fighting, and that night they were ordered to the trenches—and the Germans had the position of the trenches ranged to a nicety, so that they were able to drop shells with wicked precision all night. Next morning the German infantry retreated for a matter of a mile, uphill, and there waited for the inevitable advance of the Guards and the Black Watch. The retreat was a trap, for on the advance the two British battalions were subject to shell as well as rifle fire, and out of one section of fourteen men only one was left. This one, a corporal, was badly cut about the face, and had one knee severely damaged, but with a field dressing tied round his leg he remained in the firing line all day, going over to the Black Watch, since he had drifted too far away from his own battalion to rejoin it at once. "I had to stick it in the field all day," he says, "and the fighting was awful. The Germans had all their big guns firing at us, and we could not get our own guns up to fire back at them. I never expected to get out of it alive. Well, after lying half the night wet in the open, among the dead Germans and our own dead, I got strength enough to crawl back, and managed to find a hospital about twelve o'clock at night, nearly dead. I never got any sleep that night, but guess what the Germans did in the morning! They blew the hospital up in the air. I happened to be near the door, so I got away all right; but I got another bit in the back that flattened me out for awhile. I missed all the ambulances through this. The next carts that came along were the ammunition ones. The driver helped me on to the back of one, but I had hardly enough strength to hang on. The Germans shelled all these carts for miles, and the horses of the one I was on got hit with a shell, and I had not the strength to climb on to another one. The drivers were hurrying away for their lives, so I had to scramble along for two miles on my own to a big barn, which they called a field hospital."

And there the record ends. It makes a scrap of history of the Guards, though when the regimental histories of this war come to be written it will be found that such stories as these are only scraps of the whole, for the battles of the Aisne and of the coast do not mark the end.

With regard to the Scots Greys, their work in the early days is well known now, for from Mons down through the three weeks of the great retreat they upheld the honour of Scotland so well that on the 8th of September Sir John French addressed the regiment in words that officers and men alike will remember. He came on them while they were resting, and these were his words, as given by a man of the regiment:

"I am very sorry to disturb you from your sleep, Greys, but I feel I must say a few words to you. I have been watching your work very closely, and it has been magnificent. Your country is proud of you, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It is not the first time I have had the pleasure of thanking you, and I hope it will not be the last. There are no soldiers in the world that could have done what you have done."

This, it must be pointed out, is as it is told by a soldier of the regiment; it is worth while to make the contrast between it and a letter said to be from a man of the Greys to his wife, in which he says: