THE CAMERON HIGHLANDERS
Mr. Alan Cameron, a gentleman of Scotland in the eighteenth century,
fought a duel over which he was obliged to leave the British Isles,
whereupon he found employment in an irregular cavalry corps which
assisted the British in the American War of Independence. When the war
ended he returned to England, judging that the storm had blown over, and
at the time of the French Revolution he offered to raise a corps of
Highlanders for the British Army. The offer was accepted, and Cameron
raised 700 of his clansmen in Inverness-shire, a body which became the
79th Foot, and had its title altered in 1881 to the Cameron Highlanders.
The first active service undergone by the men of the regiment was in
Holland, where in 1794 under the Duke of York they fought against an
enemy greatly superior in numbers. Five years later the regiment again
went to Holland, to distinguish itself at the action of Egmont-op-Zee, a
name borne since that time on the regimental colours. This was followed
up by the expedition under Sir Ralph Abercromby to Egypt, whence
Napoleon and his army were driven out by the British. The Sphinx, with
"Egypt" inscribed on it, is borne by the Camerons, in common with some
other Highland regiments.
Copenhagen, at the capture of which the Camerons assisted in 1807, was
overshadowed as an exploit by the work of the "light company" of the
Camerons at Corunna in the following year. Talavera was a field in which
the Camerons had a share, as was Busaco, and the regiment helped in
holding the "lines" of Torres Vedras through the winter in which
Wellington lay at bay against Napoleon's marshals, to emerge in the
spring and force the French to retreat. At Fuentes d'Onor, after holding
the village in company with two other regiments against attack after
attack by the French, the Camerons were forced out by the flower of the
French Army, the Imperial Guard. When the fight was at its fiercest a
French soldier shot dead the colonel of the regiment, and at that the
Highlanders raised a cry of vengeance and swept away the famous Guard of
France.
From Salamanca to Toulouse the Camerons fought on through the rest of
the Peninsular campaign; they fought through Quatre Bras, and were among
the four regiments specially mentioned in dispatches by Wellington after
Waterloo. From that time, until 1854 called them to the Crimean
campaign, the men of the regiment had only peace service; but, in the
Highland Brigade under Sir Colin Campbell, the successors of the
Highlanders who had distinguished themselves at Waterloo proved that the
valour of the regiment was as great as ever, and at the battle of the
Alma the Camerons did gallant service.
Almost immediately after the Crimea came the Mutiny, and the Camerons
were among the first regiments to oppose the mutineers. At Mahomdie over
a hundred men of the regiment went down with sunstroke, and then at
Lucknow the mutineers had to be driven from house to house by bayonet
work--in which Scottish regiments have always excelled.
For the nine months that followed the work in Lucknow, the regiment was
almost constantly engaged with the enemy, especially at the battle of
Bareilly and the crossing of the Gogra and Rapti rivers. The Mohmund
and Kumasi campaigns came next, and in 1873 Queen Victoria presented the
regiment with new colours and conferred on it the title of the "Queen's
Own." Then in 1882 came the Egyptian campaign, and at Tel-el-Kebir a man
of the Camerons was first to fall in the dawn hour at which that action
began. The charge of the Camerons on the enemy's lines is a feat that
has been often described, and Lieutenant-Colonel Leith's cry of "Come
on, 79th!" has become historic.
In the attempt to rescue Gordon, and again in 1885, the Cameron
Highlanders continued their work in Egypt, and in 1893 Lochiel of
Cameron unveiled at Inverness a monument to the brave men of the
regiment who had fallen in Egypt. Four years later a second battalion
was raised, and in 1898 the 1st battalion again went up the Nile to
assist in the final Dervish overthrow. With "Remember General Gordon"
as their watchword, the Camerons shared in the battle of the Atbara, at
which Mahmoud's army was annihilated and Mahmoud himself taken prisoner.
Sharing in the onward march, the Camerons were present at Omdurman,
where the power of the Khalifa was finally broken, and the battalion
attended the memorial service held in Khartoum on September 4th of that
year in memory of General Gordon. Thence one company of the regiment
went up to Fashoda, and had the unique honour of representing the
British Army there at the time of the incident, now nearly forgotten,
which so nearly led to war with France.
It was not until March of 1900 that the Camerons landed at East London
to take part in the South African campaign, and they were then
incorporated in the 21st Brigade under General Bruce Hamilton. They
shared in the general advance to Pretoria, in the crossing of the Zand
River, the battle of Doorn Kop, and the engagement at Diamond Hill.
Later, they shared in the capture of Prinsloo in the Wittebergen, and in
the reliefs of Winburg and Ladybrand. Up to the end of the war the
Camerons were in the thick of things, and the men received the personal
thanks of General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien for the work they had
performed while serving under him, and, what was more, for the fine
spirit in which that work had been done.
The most that can be done with regard to locating the Camerons in France
is to state that they formed a part of the First Division, and that when
the Allies took the offensive the Camerons took the place of the
Munsters; also that they have acted in very close conjunction with the
Black Watch, with whom, it is highly probable, they were brigaded. At
Mons the Black Watch formed the first line, and, as they lost a
considerable number of men, the Camerons were moved up by way of
support, when thirteen men of the battalion were killed and wounded. In
the course of the great retreat there were as many as 300 men missing at
one time, but parties of ten and twelve came in later and reduced the
apparent losses. When nearing Soissons in the course of the retreat, the
Black Watch were made the object of an encircling movement by the enemy,
but they escaped with the aid of the 117th Battery R.F.A. and that of
some of the Camerons. One man of the Black Watch had crossed the Aisne
in the retreat, and was wounded while lying out in the open to fire, and
a Cameron man stood by him and assisted him to the rear at the cost of
three wounds to himself.
These slight incidents are all that can be gleaned with regard to the
actual movements of the Camerons at the time of the retreat. Several
minor incidents, however, have come to light, and of these many bear on
the German abuse of the white flag and of all the recognised rules of
war. On one occasion Germans were seen walking between the
trenches--their own and the British--carrying stretchers; and, under the
assumption that they were carrying wounded, firing was stopped for the
time. It was discovered, however, that instead of wounded the supposed
ambulance men were carrying machine guns on their stretchers, and at the
same time they showed the Red Cross flag. On the other hand, such of the
enemy as have been taken prisoners by the Camerons on the retreat told
their captors that they expected to be shot at once, having been told by
their officers that that would be their fate if they fell into the
enemy's hands.
It appears that there is plenty of humour among the Cameron men on the
battlefield. "It's very funny," says one of them, "to hear a Frenchman
try to sing 'Tipperary.' It fairly stumps them, but they do their best.
The two favourite songs with our boys are 'Tipperary' and the
Marseillaise. You should see a Frenchman when he hears that--he goes
fairly daft. These Frenchmen seem terribly loungy to look at, but they
are good fighters, for all that. They go smashing into it, and their
artillery is the best out there. But our officers are a fine lot, the
best set of men I ever came across. They do their share."
Thus, discursively, a wounded Cameron man told of the incidentals of the
fighting in France--the earlier days. Then comes a fairly detailed
account of the battle of the Marne, in which the first three days,
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, are described as "pretty much
preliminary," but on Tuesday the brigade of which the Camerons formed a
part went out to meet the enemy, and drove them back, capturing about
six hundred prisoners and eight guns. The ground was sodden with rain,
and the Camerons lay out in the harvest fields taking cover behind the
standing sheaves of corn, while the German artillery rained out shells
on them, not even stopping when their own infantry advanced on the
British troops. "We got it very rough, and a man beside me--one of our
battalion--went out to help an officer who was badly wounded, but just
as he got up to the officer he dropped. Our fellows were falling all
round, and at about ten in the morning I got my dose. During the day the
fighting round where I was lying fell off a bit, but I had to lay on the
ground until dark, when another chap, who saw I couldn't move, came over
to make me a bed of straw and get me comfortable. But before he could
get my bed made a bullet got him through the spine, and he tumbled over
in a heap--stone dead. I was lucky to get out of it, for the Germans
were firing on our ambulance men. They had snipers lying among our
wounded, and that night, when stretcher bearers came out to carry in the
wounded officer, three of the bearers were shot. It was Wednesday
morning before I was picked up by a picket of the Coldstream Guards."
At the beginning of the battle of the Aisne, the Camerons were brought
up to advance in skirmishing order under shell fire, when one man was
wounded by shell fire, and fell back behind a haystack. Some other
wounded also sought the shelter of the haystack, whereupon the Germans
immediately began to shell it, and the wounded men sought other shelter,
to fall in with a convoy of thirty German prisoners. Finally they found
the transport column, and were taken back to a hospital established in a
village in rear of the firing line--but this hospital was already full
up. No less than thirty-two shells were aimed directly at this hospital,
though it had a Red Cross flag flying over it all the time. This
hospital was cleared, and two hours after the patients had been removed
it was utterly destroyed by shell fire.
Another account relates that the enemy occupied the positions on the
Aisne that they had taken up in 1870, and their guns were all placed in
concrete positions, carefully prepared against the event. After the
Camerons took up their position, the distance between the opposing
forces was about a thousand yards, with fairly open ground between, and
the regiment was ordered to attack the trenches held by the enemy. The
whole brigade advanced under heavy shell fire until within 250 yards of
the enemy's position--and then the man who tells of this incident was
struck down by shell fire and rendered unconscious, so that he did not
see the result of the advance. He knew, however, that it must have been
successful, since he was still behind the British line when he recovered
consciousness.
It was later on, when the battle of the Aisne had taken on the nature of
a siege action, that the cave disaster occurred which caused the deaths
of over thirty officers and men of the regiment. Near the firing line
was a large, spacious cave, which was used partly as a collecting base
for the wounded, and partly as the regimental headquarters; and on the
25th of September, while the German artillery was shelling the British
positions, the roof of the cave was struck by one of the big German
shells, with the result that it fell in, burying thirty-five officers
and men. The cave was some 300 yards behind the firing line, so that the
incident went unobserved for some time--though it is doubtful if
anything could have been done even had prompt action been taken, since
the fall of rock and earth was so heavy that most of the men in the cave
must have been killed instantaneously. Four of the occupants, however,
were able to shout for help, being pinned down by masses of rock at the
back of the cave when the roof fell in; and, nearly two hours after the
accident, other men of the regiment heard the shouts of those
imprisoned, and set to the work of rescue. Three men had been liberated,
and while the rescuers were at work getting out the fourth man another
shell landed in the same spot, covered in the pinned man, and blew his
would-be rescuer to pieces. But this wounded man, though buried anew,
was still alive, though he lost consciousness after two hours. An
officer and three men of the Scots Guards finally dug him out, after he
had been buried for about six hours, and he was sent away to hospital
and recovery.
The Camerons came, with the greater part of the British force in France,
to the fighting in the north-west which foiled the German attack on
Calais, and from this part of the battle line one account has come
through. "We were fairly giving it to the Germans," says a wounded man
from this quarter. "In the morning we started advancing in single line
by sections at three paces interval across open fields at the double,
and the shells were landing all round us as fast as the enemy could fire
them, but we managed to get into our positions. We had a bad time of it
there, but we managed to put a stop to the German advance, and then we
took up another position, and held it. When the enemy were within about
eighty yards of us the officer in charge of the company gave the order
to fix bayonets, and we charged, at which the Germans ran away. We
opened fire on them, and at about two o'clock on that day I was wounded.
I was lying in a hollow of the ground which we had just cleared, and I
had to lie there for hours until the enemy were driven back by a British
regiment. Shortly after I was wounded the Germans gained the crest of a
hill, and one of the Scots Guards lying there wounded put up his hands
for them not to shoot, but one of them came to within two yards of him
and shot him through the stomach, and he rolled over again and died
about two hours afterwards."
Against this cold-blooded savagery must be set the account given by an
officer of the 1st battalion of the Camerons, who states that he was
shot through the leg just before the enemy charged in great numbers and
drove the British out of their trenches. One of the men tried to get the
officer along in the retirement, but could not do so, and he was made a
prisoner. "They banged me about a bit at first, and tied my hands behind
my back, and tried to get me to walk, but of course I could not. At last
one splendid German came forward and took me off to their own wounded in
a farmhouse. He stayed by me the whole time, and was most wonderfully
good to me. They dressed my wound and got me some water, and did what
they could for me. Next day, at two in the afternoon, my company charged
back at the house and drove the enemy back, rescuing me and the one or
two other wounded prisoners in the house."
Another officer writes, concerning the time on the Aisne: "The way the
Germans treat property is disgusting. While passing through a village
not long ago the greater part of the furniture of all the houses had
been dragged out and broken up, all the crockery smashed, all the
bedding dragged out into the open street, and there left to be soaked by
the rain. It is awful to see the poor peasants wandering about, homeless
and starving.
"Everywhere is the fearful smell of dead horses. It seems to saturate
the atmosphere, and one marches through miles of it."
Carrion and ruin! And "one splendid German," who stands out from among
his fellows because he exercised the simple instincts of humanity!
Surely in this one incident is as great accusation against the German
race as in the other and worse accounts.
Meanwhile the Camerons fight on, with the courage that their regiment
has shown from the time of Abercrombie's campaign in Egypt unto this
day.