THE BLACK WATCH
Though the Royal Scots can claim to be the oldest regiment of the
British Army, the Black Watch can claim--and do claim--to be the oldest
corps of Highlanders. The regiment, known in old time as the
"Forty-second," was originally formed out of the independent companies
raised in 1729 to keep the peace in the hills of the Scottish Highlands,
and the first parade as a regiment took place near Aberfeldy in 1740,
when the regiment was numbered "43." This was subsequently changed to
"42."
Five years later the regiment saw its first active service abroad at
Fontenoy, when its men charged with such spirit that they were
described by a French writer as "Highland furies." In 1756 the Black
Watch went to America, and at Ticonderaga the loss in killed and wounded
amounted to 647 officers and men. So conspicuous was the bravery of the
regiment on this occasion that the King conferred on it the title of
"Royal," and unto this day the Black Watch are "The Royal Highlanders."
The regiment was in at the capture of Montreal, and later took part in
the American War of Independence, when, in spite of the offers of heavy
bribes, not a single man could be induced to desert from the ranks, bad
as was the cause in which the British troops were fighting then.
In 1780 the second battalion of the Black Watch was raised, to begin its
active service in India. It was constituted a separate regiment in 1786,
and named the "Perthshire Regiment," numbered "73." (Two officers and
fifty-three men of this battalion were among the heroes who went down
with the _Birkenhead_.) It was nearly a century later that the
Perthshire Regiment was again joined to the Black Watch as its second
battalion, and thenceforth the battle honours of both battalions have
been borne on the colours of the regiment.
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."
The writer continues with a description of the charge, in which, he
says, the men of the Black Watch hung on to the stirrup-leathers of the
Greys and went through machine-gun fire on to the German lines, and
thence through to the guns of the enemy. "There were about 1,900 of us
in that charge against 20,000 Germans, and the charge itself lasted
about four hours. We took close upon 4,000 prisoners, and captured a
lot of their guns. In the course of the fighting I got a cut from a
German sword--they are very much like saws--and fell into a pool of
water, where I lay unconscious for nearly a day and night. I was picked
up by one of the 9th Lancers."
There the story ends. It is circumstantial and well borne out by other
accounts of the doings of the Black Watch up to the time of St. Quentin,
but one fears to accept the story of that charge in its entirety. If the
men of the Black Watch advanced to within a hundred yards of the enemy
under cover of their own artillery, then where did the Greys come from?
For surely no artillery ever kept on firing at the enemy until _cavalry_
were within a hundred yards of their objective in a charge. It is
curious, too, but this is the only account that has come to hand--the
only personal account of a participator--with regard to that charge of
the Greys with Black Watch men hanging on to their stirrup-leathers. The
story is given as told, for what it is worth.
Several accounts concur in the assistance rendered to the regiment by
the 117th Battery of R.F.A., and one especially details how, when the
Black Watch were subjected to overwhelming rifle fire, the guns were
turned on the German riflemen with terrible effect. But there are some
newspaper errors in connection with this event which are almost amusing.
One of them states that, with regard to a driver of the 117th
Battery--"the Highlanders were being subjected to a terrific rifle fire,
when the artilleryman heroically advanced, and, getting his gun in
position, put the German riflemen to flight." This was more than
heroism, for a gun weighs the better part of a ton, altogether, and a
driver has but a very elementary knowledge of the firing mechanism of
the weapon--his business is with the horses. That one driver should get
the gun into position and then proceed to load and fire it, a business
which occupies about a dozen men, as a rule, is well worthy of comment.
These discrepancies with known fact are unfortunately rather plentiful
where the Black Watch are concerned. Another of them, though it does not
credit artillerymen with the strength of elephants, tells of things that
happened "on the 14th of August, at the battle of the Aisne,"--whereas
on the 14th of August the great retreat was still in progress, and the
battle of the Marne had not been fought, let alone that of the Aisne. "I
only know," says the author of this account, "that we lost close on 400
of the regiment, killed and wounded, the same day that I was wounded.
That was on the 14th of August, at the battle of the Aisne. It was
terrible, men falling on either side. The Germans were very
treacherous, firing on our ambulance men as well. I was in two hospitals
which we were shelled out of. All the men who could walk were told to go
off as soon as possible. There were four of us left in the place all the
forenoon, and the shells landing round about. I managed to crawl away
when there was no firing, and I had to go about five miles to the next
place. I don't know what I would have done had not an officer passing in
his motor seen me and taken me to the hospital."
Another of the same kind: "On one occasion I had become detached from
the main body, and met four Germans. I disposed of three of my
adversaries with three successive shots, and was about to deal with the
fourth, when the bolt of my rifle became jammed. The German fired, but
only slightly wounded me, and I adjusted my rifle, charged my magazine,
and put the man out of action."
More heroism, almost equal to that of the gunner just quoted--and
newspapers are publishing such "letters from the front" as these every
day.
To come back to the real work of the regiment, a further account deals
with the battle of the Aisne, where, on the 14th of September, the men
occupied some high ground, and were discovered by the enemy, who set to
work to render the position untenable by means of artillery fire. A
patrol, sent out to get into communication with the Northamptons, had to
take cover from the German artillery fire, which was so fierce that it
was only in darkness they were able to return. In taking German trenches
later, the Black Watch and the Camerons, who advanced together, came
across numbers of dead Germans, proving that their own fire had been
quite as deadly as that of their enemies. Apparently the timing of the
fuses of German shells was none too good. "The artillery fire of the
Germans was good, but their shells did not do nearly the same damage as
those fired from the British guns. The British shells when they exploded
covered a radius of something like a hundred yards, but the German
shells on bursting seemed to send all their contents in a forward
direction."
"But the Aisne has been a cause of heavy loss to the Black Watch," said
another member of the regiment. "We lost heavily in taking up position,
and the men were saddened by the loss of so many officers. One day we
lost three--a captain killed, a senior captain very severely wounded,
and a lieutenant killed. Then, later, the men had to deplore the loss of
their commanding officer, Colonel Grant Duff--one of the bravest and
best officers the regiment ever had. He died bravely. He was hard
pressed and doing execution with one of his men's rifles when he fell
with a mortal wound."
Another officer eulogised by his men was Captain Green, who was wounded
at the Aisne. Hot fighting was kept up in the trenches from five in the
morning until night had fallen, and throughout the night the men waited
in their trenches. Shortly after four o'clock of the following morning
firing was heard in front, and with the remark, "I am going forward,
anyway," Captain Green went out to the front, his object being to get
the range for the men, if possible. He got the range, but was hit in the
head, and bandaged the wound himself, keeping his place in the trenches
and declining to go into hospital.
The German fear of cold steel is emphasised in many accounts given by
men of the Black Watch. "They wouldn't look at the bayonet, and we ruled
the roost with very slight losses," says one; and another--"The Germans
are awfully frightened of the cold steel, and when they get a stab it is
almost invariably in the back, for they run away from our boys when the
bayonet appears."
Once in a while there comes an account of humanity on the part of the
Germans; and one man of the Black Watch tells how he lay out in the open
at the position of the Aisne for hours, wounded, and at last a German
came along and bound up his wound under heavy fire. The German made the
wounded man quite comfortable, and was about to retire from the danger
area, when a stray bullet caught him, and he fell dead beside the man he
had befriended.
Such stories as this last are welcome, and form a relief from the
numberless stories of German barbarity that have appeared. Not that they
disprove the stories of brutality, but they go to show that the policy
of ruthlessness is a calculated one, and that the individual German
might be a kind-hearted man at times if his officers would let him. The
instances of cruelty and wanton destruction that have been related all
point to organised cruelty, organised destruction--it is more a matter
of policy than of the conduct of individuals.
The stories quoted here form a fairly connected record of the work of
the Black Watch up to the time of the battle on the Aisne; of what came
after, there is as yet no definite record. We know, from the casualty
lists, that the Royal Highlanders are still making history in France,
but in this first week of November we know no more than that, and a
great story must still wait telling until the oft-quoted "fog of war"
has lifted from the actions in Flanders and the north-west of France.