CHAPTER SIXTEEN
No doubt, if I had been trained in writing rather than in the tactical requirements for service in the British army, I should call this the appendix of my book. I prefer not to do so, having found in my own experience that readers may be inclined to view the appendix in literature as similar to the appendix in surgery—something which is unnecessary.
I cannot so regard this chapter. It is to me a component and interesting part of the whole, for it goes to the source of the splendid and unique traditions of the regiment in which I have been privileged to serve as a soldier of my country.
A great deal has been written about the Black Watch. Even poets have been inspired to sing of its deeds in stanzas which are undying. Men of Highland birth, glorying in its history, have set down the facts of its achievements under England’s banner. Yet most of these records are composed of dry facts, with no expressed sense of the romantic and the unusual which enter so largely into the history of the most famous fighting organization in the world. And most of them, also, might be written from the viewpoint of a century ago. They do not bring the recital of the achievements of the Black Watch into the atmosphere of to-day, with due regard for the interesting and almost startling effect of contrast.
This thought came to me one day when I was riding on a trolley through one of the busy districts of that part of Greater New York which lies east of the bridged river, and suddenly realized that I was passing over the very ground upon which the Black Watch had its first important engagement in the war of the American Revolution—the Battle of Brooklyn. I recalled that on this very spot, where clanging trolleys, quick motor cars and hurrying pedestrians made a confusing rush of traffic, the men of the Black Watch fought, in the fashion of their forefathers, with broadsword and pistol, against the sturdy pioneers whose descendants are now the allies of our nation in a war for world freedom. In the annals of our regiment, the use of the broadsword and pistol in the Battle of Brooklyn is duly recorded, for it was after this engagement that the regiment was required to lay aside these mediæval weapons—a fact which occasioned such discontent among the veterans of the Watch that there was even fear that the Highland stubbornness might manifest itself as markedly in protest as on the occasion—in England, in 1743—when the men of the regiment, confronted with orders issued in ignorance of the Highland characteristics and customs, departed quietly, in a body, without the knowledge of their officers, and marched as far as Northampton with the intention of returning to their Highland homes, relinquishing the purpose only when prolonged negotiations had made the facts of the situation plain to their stubborn minds.
On the whole, however, this disposition on the part of the men of the Black Watch could hardly be called surprising, in view of the ignorance regarding the Highland character then prevalent in England. Three years before, King George the Second, having never seen a Scotch Highlander—although the Black Watch had already been organized in the Highlands as the Forty-third regiment of the British army—asked to have some examples of the race sent to appear before him and his court. Two Highlanders, Gregor MacGregor and John Campbell, appeared in response to the King’s command. (A third, John Grant, began the journey to London with them but died on the way.) MacGregor and Campbell gave exhibitions of their dexterity with the broadsword and the Lochaber axe, in the presence of the King and his Court. When they had finished the King gave each a gold guinea as a gratuity. They gave the coins as a tip to the porter, on their departure. The King had not understood that his guests were Highland gentlemen.
Sitting at the window of the house where I now pass the peaceful and uneventful days of the soldier who has fought until wounds incapacitate him for further service afield, I smiled, one day, at another thought in which the past and the present incongruously came into association. From this window, I viewed the populous, close-built residential stretches of Washington Heights, typical of the city life of to-day. And, amid all this, my eye could seek out the very spot where occurred the grimly humorous adventure of Major Murray, most corpulent of the officers of the Black Watch, when the command was fighting against Washington’s rebellious patriots. Having to scale the heights which were later to become famous as the habitat of the hardy goats of Harlem, Major Murray was at a great disadvantage because of his weight and girth. “Soldiers, would you leave me behind?” he appealed, pathetically, when he needed assistance. And then his husky Highlanders would boost him upward toward the fray. It was, consequently, in a somewhat breathless and confused condition that the valiant major attained the spot upon the heights where the conflict raged. Rushing forward to close with some antagonist in the Colonials, Major Murray discovered that his only weapon, his dirk, had got twisted behind him in the strenuous struggles of the ascent and that, because of his excessive fatness, he couldn’t reach it. The records of the regiment, at the home station, Perth, state that the major, on this occasion, tore a sword from the grasp of one of three Colonials who attacked him and put all three to flight. With no thought to cast aspersion upon the major’s valour, I have always been inclined to the belief that the writer of the regimental reports may have compensated in a certain generosity of statement for his earlier description of the major’s comic predicament.
Study of the history of the Black Watch, gathered, largely, in a fragmentary way, has always had a fascination for me. I have felt in the greatest degree the pride of membership in the organization—and the world knows that the men of the Black Watch have always made much of the name. I feel that tradition had well prepared the regiment for its sacrificial and almost superhuman efforts between Mons and the Marne. For hard fighting and long fighting—in every quarter of the globe and with opponents of almost every race—civilized and uncivilized—no organized fighting force has ever had a record to equal that of the Black Watch.