A Regiment With A Wonderful History

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 364, 26 May 1928, Page 26

A Regiment With A Wonderful History

HIS summer The Royal 1 Scots Fusiliers celebrate * the 250t.h anniversary their creation. There t i will be a parade at Portsmouth, a regimental dinner in London, at which it is hoped that the Colonel-in-Chief, the Prince of Wales, will be present, and a great gathering in Glasgow of those who have served in the regiment and are now living in Scotland. The regiment will also give a special display commemorative of its history at the Royal Military Tournament at Olympia! The Royal Scots Fusiliers rank as the 21st regiment of the line because they take their number from the date at which they joined the English establishment. But they began in 1678, seven years before their Southern equivalent. The Royal Fusiliers, who rank as 7th of the line, and are therefore the fourth oldest of our regiments. Their origin lies in the rough times when Lauderdale ruled Scotland. In 1678 he brought down j the Highland Host to discipline the j Covenanters oT Ayr and Lanark, and after that remarkable force had straggled ba'ck to its mountains it was decided to raise a permanent regiment for the same purpose. It is a paradox that the regiment specially identified with the Western Lowlands should j have its origin in the incursion of | Highland marauders. The first colonel was Charles, fifth j Earl of Mar; the first LieutenantColonel was William, third Earl of Daihousie, the hero of the couplet in Pope’s "Art of Sinking”: "And thou, Daihousie, the great god of war Lieutenant-Colonel to the Earl of ! Mar.” The “Grey-Breeks” were soon to be ; < aught up in the main tide of European war. They were not, as was once believed, at Killicrankie and they were never near Glencoe, but they made a stout fight of It at Steenkirk. They were with Ramsay in the Scots Brigade at Landen, and they were captured as a body at the fall of Deinse. But their days of glory came with Marlborough. At Blenheim they were under Cutts. the "Salamander,” in Row's Brigade, and took part in the desperate assault on the palisades of

the village, having 23 casualties among their officers. At Ramillies the Picardie Regiment met its doom when the 21st forced it out of the village into the arms of Borthwick and the Scots Brigade. At Oudenarde they had no more than a musketry duel, but they lost heavily at the siege of Lille, and they were apparently with Orkney at Malplaquet, where their Colonel fell. Two centuries later the regiment was to find itself engaged on the same battleground. The 21st was with Burgoyne in the advance from Lake Champlain, and the remnant of it shared in the surrender at Saratoga, for which the regiment has no cause to blush. “In the whole history of the Army,” Sir John Fortescue has written, “I hav» encountered no greater display of steadfastness and fortitude than the heroic stand of the 20th, the 21st, and the 62nd.”

In the Napoleonic Wars the regiment had a dreary time, with little glory and large losses. For three years it was quartered in the West Indies, fighting small but costly battles in Martinique and Guadaloupe, and dying wholesale of yellow fever. The story of these days may be found in James Grant’s forgotten novel “Oliver Ellis.” When it came home it was mixed up in Dublin riots, and presently acquired a second battalion. The first battalion was in Sicily,

under Sir Frederick Adam, did a short j tour in the Peninsula, and shared in the entry into Genoa; while the second battalion was in the disastrous attack at Bergen-op-Zoom, after which it was disbanded. The regi ment was also in the war with Amer j ica of 1814, fought at Bladensburg and helped to capture Washington — where, in the White House, a com I pany of hungry Scots Fusiliers ate j the banquet prepared for President Madison to celebrate the expected victory. But Andrew Jackson at New Orleans was too much for them. There, out of 6,000 British engaged, 2,000 fell, and the regiment lost half its strength. During the peaceful first half of the 19th century the Scots Fusiliers served in the West Indies, Australia and India, and on the eve of the Crimean War were in perfection of condition and had some of the best officers in the Army. They were to need all their training, for on them, at Inkermann, fell one of the hardest tasks ever allotted to British soldiers. On that November Sunday they bore the brunt of the Russian surprise, and fought all day in heroic driblets against desperate odds. If Blenheim was for the 21st its proudest achievement in attack, Inkermann may be set down as up to that date its greatest record in stubborn defence. That record was not surpassed till, in the same autumn weather 60 years later, in the mud of Flanders, a day ot more fateful issues saw a still more glorious and tragic sacrifice. After the Crimea a second battalion was again added. Between the two battalions the regiment took part in the Zulu and First Transvaal Wars, where it had the honours of the defence of Potchefstroom and Rustenburg. It fought in Burma and in Tirah, and in the South African War distinguished itself at Pieter's Hill in the operations tor the relief of Ladysmith, and in the confused action of Frederikstad. When the Great War broke out the first battalion was in the ninth brigade of the Third Division, while the second battalion was in the Seventh Division. The record ot the regiment between 1914 and 1918 can only be roughly sketched. It was less a regiment than one of the training schools through which the manhood of the country passed to the field. Apait from its reserve, home service and labour units, it sent nine battalions to the different battlegrounds. Only Mesopotamia and Italy were without contingents of Scots Fusiliers; otherwise they were represented in every main action of the campaign, except Allenby’s final drive to Damascus.