AND THE BOYS FROM OLD CALEDONIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 199, 16 April 1943, Page 5

AND THE BOYS FROM OLD CALEDONIA

Into Battle With The Highland Division

E know row that the New Zealanders turned the Mareth Line with the assistance of the 51st Highland Division. Here is a tribute to that Division written for "Picture Post" by Macdonald Hastings. N a desolate moor in Inver-ness-shire -- where the skies are forever weeping — two rows of grey stones mark the trenches where Highland dead were buried, according to their clans, after the Battle of Culloden in 1745. The names on the stones are the same names which label wooden crosses in the sands of the Egyptian desert now. The men of the Highland Divisionthe men who stormed the Axis lines at El Alamein — are the kith and kin of the clansmen who rose for Bonnie Prince Charlie in the °45. If that link with the past seems unimportant to you, if the thought of a battle fought 200 years ago (and so small that to-day it would scarcely be counted worthy of an official commuftque) moves you not at all, know yourself for an unregenerate: Sassenach. , Read no further. But if you can feel the surge of history, if you can conjure inspiration from the past, then you can understand-in some degree-the thing which is called the Highland tradition.

North of Perth, history isn’t a dusty memory. In 200 years, between Culloden and El Alamein, neither the men nor the lands they live in have changed. The men of the Highland Division come from identically the same district, the same crofters’ cottages, the same chieftains’ castles from which their forefathers went to battle ‘before them. They’re fighting together now in the same family regiments in which generations of their people have served and died. And, deep down inside them, they’re fighting for the age-old Highland cause. What it is won’t go into words; there are no words to express it. But you can hear it-as Rommel’s Afrika Korps heard it-in the wild wail of the pipes. You can see it in the swing of the kilt. And you can feel it stirring in your blood in the lonely places where the red deer spring through the heather and the salmon leap in snow-fed mountain streams. } It’s not simply a tradition; it’s a living force. In the last war, any soldier will. tell you that-after his own divi-sion-the Highlanders were the best fighting division on the front. Remember Their Names There is no more stirring story in the whole of this war than the story of how a battalion of the Camerons at Le Bassée before Dunkirk threw away their battle-dress trousers and put on the kilt to meet the advancing Germans. Of two thousand men, 79-the Cameron’s regimental number in the Army List-came back. Then, in the assault on the Italian position at Keren in East Africa the Camerons again were the first in. For several weeks nobody knew about it, But when the fortress was taken, they found the bodies of the Camerons lying where they fell in the heart of the enemy positions. Twice in this war, the Highlanders have been in action as a complete division, The first time ‘was after Dunkirk, when they were landed in France to bolster up the failing French resistance. The second time was when Montgomery called on the 5i1st to lead the frontal assault on Rommel’s positions at El] Alamein. We know that the first réal victory in the land war wasn’t a cheap one, just as the last rearguard action on the’ Continent was bound to exact an ‘awful price. The Highland Division — raised from the thinnest populated area in this country — have

taken the brunt of both. And no one in the Highlands would have had it otherwise. Remember the names of the Highland regiments. You’ve heard them many times before. And you’ll hear them many times again. They number five. In order of seniority, they are the Black Watch, the Seaforth (never Seaforths), the Gordons, the Camerons (not to be confused with the Cameronians), and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.