We should take our hats off to the brave Black Watch

Scotland on Sunday ^ | April 6, 2003 | Alan Cochrane

[MadIvan]

SHE tried to be as gentle as she could. "I am very sorry but you will never be able to join Her Majesty’s Forces. You are colour-blind I’m afraid."

It wasn’t a total surprise that my perennial difficulty with pastel shades had transformed itself, officially, into a disability that barred me from service with the Army, RAF or Royal Navy - at least according to my Broughty Ferry doctor.

Even all those years ago, such a verdict wasn’t deemed to be too much of a handicap to life’s chances. Volunteering to become a sailor, soldier or airman in the years following the end of compulsory national service wasn’t exactly a trendy thing to do. This was the Swinging Sixties, after all.

So, down the years, have the armed services become estranged from the community from whence they spring? My school doctor’s barring me from even applying for the Queen’s Shilling and finding out about service life meant that only the hoary tales of our fathers and grandfathers served to inform my generation of a life under orders.

Only those at opposite ends of the social scale joined up. A few of my contemporaries at school became officers because they reckoned it was a career. They found themselves massively outnumbered in the mess by the same public school entrants who had run the British Army since time immemorial. Many more of my council estate neighbours joined the ranks because it was a job, pure and simple.

And so it has continued ever since... the once-honourable profession of arms has become more and more divorced from everyday life - and looked upon askance, too. This has never more been the case than with soldiers. There was always a bit of a cachet with airmen - they could always pretend that if they didn’t fly Tornadoes, they at least knew someone who did. Similarly, sailors joined up to see the world, and often did.

In the public’s mind, however, the poor squaddie was the poor relation. An automaton who marched up and down to someone else’s tune, he only had to look good and do what he was told. Sure, he had to take his chances on the streets of Northern Ireland - and sometimes get himself killed - but Joe Public didn’t really know what to make of that conflict anyway.

No more! If ever a perception has been changed in the space of a single day and a single action, it has been that of the profession of arms, or at least of the infantry soldier, on Tuesday of last week in the burning heat of southern Iraq.

There, under the glare of the world’s television cameras and before the eyes of an almost disbelieving press, one of Scotland’s oldest regiments did more for the reputation of the British Army than anything in the last two decades.

It was Gethin Chamberlain, correspondent on our sister newspaper The Scotsman, who provided the graphic eyewitness accounts of the Black Watch’s incredible deeds. His reports not only ensured that he should never have to buy another drink in Tayside but also that the regiment’s fame was enhanced yet again.

Not since British troops defeated numerically superior forces 7,000 miles from home in the Falklands had servicemen from these islands done so much to enhance the standing of soldiering.

Yet all the Black Watch did was to take off their tin helmets and march into Basra in their Tam o’Shanters and red hackles.

A relatively minor bit of theatre perhaps, but seldom has any action been so necessary to prove to a beleaguered populace that the troops were there to liberate - not kill - them and never, surely, has a single action so transformed the public perception of a conflict.

Before the Black Watch’s initiative, the entire coalition’s efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people had been held up to public ridicule in many a headline and on many a television station.

After them, and their distribution of smiles, as well as Duncan’s chocolate bars, it was as if not just the ‘Gallant Forty-Twa’, but indeed the entire American/British enterprise, could do nothing but succeed.

The Jocks’ ‘rough wooing’ - carefully planned incursions into enemy territory allied to patient seek-and-destroy missions - set the tone for the whole war.

It led to fulsome tributes, not just across Britain but across the globe, and proved that the world’s toughest infantry could turn on the charm with the best of them.

As a Dundonian who still lives in Angus, I find it particularly heartening that it has been the Black Watch that has shown the way. The oldest Highland regiment was raised in neighbouring Perthshire and recruits, still, in the cities, towns, villages and straths of that part of Scotland.

My uncles served in it, and its famous red hackle gave its name to a favourite local whisky as well as to umpteen pubs. Its battle honours are as great as any in the British Army.

However, if truth be told, nobody - not even in my neck of the woods - really understands and appreciates what a magnificent institution we have in our midst.

If it is a truism that we take the best things in life for granted, then surely it was never more accurate than with our very own Scottish regiments - and particularly the Black Watch.

What I find incredible is that an outfit can retain such a good conceit of itself that it can reach a pinnacle of achievement such as was gained last week, even after decades of being under-appreciated.

What we fail to realise is that such is the esprit de corps of these officers and men that they are always liable to outperform our expectations... not because they believe they owe it to us - but because of the ferociously high standards they demand of each other.

And in a Scotland where so often second-best is deemed to be good enough - be it in the classroom, on the sports field or in the political arena - the Black Watch has shown us a different way.

They have done it at a time when, with typical parsimony, the powers-that-be have often denied them the best of equipment. Their very weapons, even their uniforms and boots, have had to be fought and argued for from a stingy civil authority.

Yet the Jocks have come smiling through - tough as old boots, cussed as they come and, make no mistake about it, liable to get as drunk as lords when it’s all over.

But, above all, they’re able to befriend and reassure a terrified populace even as they blast their tormentors off the face of the earth. That’s the Scottish soldier. That’s the Black Watch.

I have been enormously proud of their achievements in the past week, but I suppose I will remain in a minority amongst my countrymen. Mind you, I don’t suppose the Jocks will give a damn.

[lizma]

)..I've met many Americans who see England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales as being the 'British Isles'..but any American who has come to these islands and voiced that opinion, I'm sure, has been educated differently)

A few years ago, while I was in Germany, I met a bunch of students from Cardiff.

I said "Oh, you're Welsh" and they answered "No, we're British."

Surprised me.

[tet68]

More.

The Black Watch was raised in 1739 as the 43rd Highland Regiment, in 1751 the 42nd was raised, and in 1881 both Regiments became the 1st and 2nd battalions of the Black Watch (Royal Highlanders)

Regimental Battle Honours shown on colours.

 1756 - 1763 Guadaloupe 1759, Martinique 1762, Havannah during the Seven Years war 
 1763 - 1764 Pontiac's Conspiracy in North America 
 1781 - 1783  at Mangalore during the second Mysore War 
 1789 - 1791 Mysore during the Third Mysore War 
 1799      Seringapatam during the fourth Mysore War 
 1808 - 1814  Corunna, Busaco, Fuentes d'Onoro, Salamanca, Pyrenees, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, Poulouse during .              the Peninsula war  
 1815,   Battle of Waterloo 
 1846 - 1847  Seventh Kaffir War 
 1851 - 1853  Eighth Kaffir War 
 1854 - 1855  Alma, Sebastopol, during the Crimean War 
 1857 - 1858  Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny 
 1873 - 1874  Ashantee War 
 1882 - Tel El Kibir during the Arabi Pasha Revolt 
 1882 - 1884   First Sudan War 
 1885 - Kirbekan, Nile during the Egyptian Campaign 
 1914 - 1918  Marne 1914, 1918, Ypres 1914, 1917, 1918, Loos, Somme 1916, 1918, Arras 1917, 1918, Lys, Hindenburg Line, Doian 1917, Megiddo, Kut al Amara 1917 
 1939 - 1945 Falaise Rd, Rhine , Tobruk 1941, El Alamein, Akarit, Tunis, Sicily 1943, Cassino II, Crete,  Burma 1944 
 1950 - 1953  The Hook 1952, During the Korean War 

VICTORIA CROSS AWARDS.

There has been fifteen members of the regiment who have been awarded the Victoria Cross, Eight during the Indian Mutiny, One during the Ashanti War, One during the first Sudan war, ,four during the World war One and one during the Korean War

[TomB]

Scottish bump.

[Hill-William]

May God Bless the Black Watch and you as well Mad Ivan for bringing us the post.

[Happygal]

I said "Oh, you're Welsh" and they answered "No, we're British."

Well, I have to say that surprises me. Because, I live in a town which has a port that services the UK through Wales, and we get a LOT of Welsh blokes over here on weekends. NOT a single ONE of them, have I heard calling themselves 'British'.

(Don't get me wrong..I'm 'British' friendly..but that surprises ...no AMAZES..me)

[LibKill]

I salute the Black Watch.

Now, those 'stingy' civil authorities might just part with a few shillings to adequately equip these brave men.

[SevenofNine]

OOHHHH Ivan

Rackkkkk these Scottish Troops I didn't know Scotland taking part here

SILLY ME

[Guenevere]

#9...So very very true :)))
(I'm relating it to the Southern men)

[Mr. Silverback]

Go Black Watch! As my Campbell ancestors would say, "Cruachan!"

[Iris7]

Just want you people to know that I appreciate your standing with us in this Iraq situation. I will never forget.

Your people - OUR people - are doing what must be done to prevent nuclear terrorism within the next decade. We have a righteous, righteous cause.

[Happygal]

Black Watch BUMP!

[metesky]

Ofttimes its braver to lower your weapon than to raise it.

Excellent.

Bump for the "Nuke 'em all" crowd.

[FreedomPoster]

The only thing that would have made this story better is if there were a piper wailing away as they moved into Basrah. Black Watch bump.

[rrrod]

one big atta boy to them!

[FreedomPoster]