A Time of Tyrants

by Trevor Royle

  Above all, soldiering remained the preserve of the regiment, especially in the infantry. Its structure had been fixed by a process which had begun over half a century ago in 1872 under the direction of the Secretary for War, Edward Cardwell, and was finalised nine years later by his successor Hugh Childers, whereby single-battalion regiments were linked with others of their kind to form new two-battalion regiments and provided with territorial designations. Driving the Cardwell–Childers’ reforms was the theory that one battalion would serve at home while the other was stationed abroad, and would receive drafts and reliefs from the home-based battalion to keep it up to strength. As a result of these changes, regimental numbers were dropped and territorial names were adopted throughout the army but, as happens in every period of reform, the changes outraged older soldiers who deplored the loss of cherished numbers and the introduction of what they held to be undignified territorial names, some of which bore no relation to the new regiment’s traditions and customs.

  The two-battalion system allowed one to remain on home service while the second was garrisoned overseas, and to a large extent it worked. But there were drawbacks. The battalion serving overseas was inevitably fully manned as a result of receiving drafts from the home depot, and as a result there was a natural tendency for the home service battalion to be under strength. During the inter-war years and until the outbreak of war in 1939, the Scottish regiments were deployed at home and across the empire in the following locations:

  The Royal Scots, 1st Battalion: India, home service; 2nd Battalion: Ireland, Egypt, China, India, Hong Kong.

  The Royal Scots Fusiliers, 1st Battalion: India; 2nd Battalion: Ireland, India, home service.

  The King’s Own Scottish Borderers, 1st Battalion: India, Egypt, home service; 2nd Battalion: Ireland, Hong Kong, India.

  The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), 1st Battalion: Shanghai, Egypt, India; 2nd Battalion: India, home service.

  The Black Watch, 1st Battalion: India, home service; 2nd Battalion: home service, Palestine.

  The Highland Light Infantry, 1st Battalion: India, home service; 2nd Battalion: India.

  The Seaforth Highlanders, 1st Battalion: home service, Palestine, Shanghai; 2nd Battalion: India, Palestine, home service.

  The Gordon Highlanders, 1st Battalion: Ireland, India, Palestine; 2nd Battalion: home service, Singapore.

  Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, 1st Battalion: India, home service; 2nd Battalion: home service, Palestine, India.

  The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 1st Battalion: Egypt, home service; 2nd Battalion: Ireland, West Indies, Shanghai, India and Hong Kong.

  During this same period Scots Guardsmen served in China, Egypt and Palestine while The Royal Scots Greys served in Palestine and were not mechanised until 1940. The men who served in all these regiments were volunteers, men who had joined the army as a career or who had been forced by economic or social circumstance to wear uniform. From contemporary recruiting literature it is clear that the army placed a high premium on the fact that its soldiers would have the possibility of serving overseas, perhaps in an exotic location, and the stations listed above show that the ambitious or adventurous soldier would stand a good chance of serving in India or in the Far East.

  In addition to the Regular Army there was the Territorial Army (TA), a part-time force which had been raised originally in 1908 for home defence but which had served on the front line with great distinction in the First World War. It too had suffered from cutbacks, but as the Nazi threat developed in Europe in the late 1930s, belated steps had been taken to rectify the situation by providing more modern weapons and strengthening the TA’s Anti-Aircraft Command. This consisted of five existing divisions and two projected divisions which would be responsible for manning the searchlight and anti-aircraft defences. To meet the needs for additional personnel, some existing infantry battalions were converted to other roles. For example, in The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders the recently amalgamated 5th/6th Battalions resumed their previous separate identities – 5th and 6th – and were re-rolled as machine-gun battalions, but this was a prelude to a greater change. In 1941 the two battalions became, respectively 91st Anti-Tank Regiment (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders), Royal Artillery, and 93rd Anti-Tank Regiment (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) Royal Artillery. Having been resurrected in Dumbarton in 1919 the 9th Battalion was also converted to the artillery role, becoming 54th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment Royal Artillery. It consisted of 160 (Dumbarton) Battery, 161 (Alexandria) Battery and 162 (Helensburgh) Battery. The 7th and 8th Battalions remained as infantry, as did their duplicates, the 10th and 11th Battalions, while the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 30th served as home-defence battalions for all or part of the war.12

  On paper it was an impressive showing, but despite recent improvements the TA was still woefully under-equipped and under-trained to fight a modern war. Partly, the reason lay in the structure of the force which was still considered in many minds to be more of a social club than a military formation. Soldiers were only obliged to attend a small number of weekly drill nights and weekend camps, and it was not obligatory to attend the annual two-week summer camp for which there was the inducement of a £5 bounty. Although there was a certain amount of weapons training and live firing, training was often little more than basic drills using procedures which were usually out of date and unsuited to modern warfare. It soon became apparent that although the call-up produced the required numbers of men, many of them had to be returned to reserved occupations while others were underage or not of sufficient physical or mental calibre to undergo active service. In December 1939 General Sir Frederick Pile, commander-in-chief, Anti-Aircraft Command, reported that of the twenty-five TA recruits in a ‘fairly representative battery’ who had been called up before Christmas, ‘one had a withered arm, one was mentally deficient, one had no thumbs and one had a glass eye which fell out when he doubled to the guns, and two were in the advanced and more obvious stages of venereal disease’.13

  The most important manifestation of the Territorial Army in Scotland, and a source of great national pride, was the 51st (Highland) Division which had been one of the leading British military formations of the First World War, with a reputation second to none. It was also one of the four TA infantry divisions which had again been earmarked for service in France as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). For many people in Scotland the Highland Division was the upholder of the country’s fighting spirit, and Territorial battalions from all five kilted Highland regiments were represented in its order of battle when it went to war in 1939 under the command of Major-General V. M. Fortune, CB, DSO:

  Divisional Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment

  1st Lothians & Border Horse (Yeomanry)

  152nd Brigade: Brigadier H. W. V. Stewart, DSO

  4th Seaforth Highlanders

  6th Seaforth Highlanders

  4th Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders

  153rd Brigade: Brigadier G. T. Burnet, MC

  4th Black Watch

  5th Gordon Highlanders

  6th Gordon Highlanders

  154th Brigade: Brigadier A. C. L. Stanley-Clarke, DSO

  6th Black Watch

  7th Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders

  8th Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders

  Royal Artillery: CRA Brigadier H. C. H. Eden, MC

  75th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery

  76th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery

  77th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery

  51st Anti-tank Regiment, Royal Artillery

  Royal Engineers: CRE Lt Col. H. M. Smail, TD

  236th Field Company, Royal Engineers

  237th Field Company, Royal Engineers

  238th Field Company, Royal Engineers

  239th Field Park Company, Royal Engineers

  Royal Corps of Signals: Lt Col. T. P. E. Murray 51st Divisional Signals Company

  Royal Army Medical Corps: A.D.M.S., Lt Col. D. P. Levack

  152nd Field A
mbulance

  153rd Field Ambulance

  154th Field Ambulance

  Royal Army Service Corps: Lt Col. T. Harris-Hunter, TD

  Divisional Ammunition Company.

  Divisional Petrol Company Divisional Supply Column

  Attached troops

  51st Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery

  1st Royal Horse Artillery (less one Battery)

  97th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery (one Battery)

  213th Army Field Company, Royal Engineers

  1st Princess Louise’s Kensington Regiment (Machine-Gunners)

  7th Royal Northumberland Fusiliers (Machine-Gunners)

  6th Royal Scots Fusiliers (Pioneers)

  7th Norfolk Regiment (Pioneers)

  Sections of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and the Royal Army Service Corps14

  It made a brave showing but in the early stages of the war equipment was a problem. Uniforms were always in short supply, with the result that some men had to train in civilian clothes, and riflemen were still equipped with the old .303 Short Lee Enfield rifles and Mills grenades. The standard machine-gun was the First World War Vickers and the first .303 Bren gun did not appear until 1939. At the same time the tracked Bren carrier began to be introduced, and supporting artillery batteries were equipped with the new 25-pounder howitzer which had a maximum range of 13,400 yards. Anti-tank measures were provided by the Boys .55-inch anti-tank rifle, a bolt-action weapon which was only capable of destroying the thinnest of armour, and then only at close range. The division’s armoured component, 1st Lothians & Border Horse, arrived in April 1940 to replace 1st Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, and was equipped with Bren carriers and Vickers Mark VIB light tanks armed with a .50-inch Vickers machine-gun and a .303 Vickers machine-gun. With a crew of three they had a top speed of 25 miles per hour and a range of 130 miles, but their small size and light armour meant that they were only really useful for reconnaissance duties.

  On the other hand, morale in the division was high and this was given an added fillip by the knowledge that the individual battalions belonged to famous Highland regiments with proud fighting traditions. They also had a superb leader in Fortune, who had commanded 1st Black Watch in 1916 and enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as a fighting soldier. He was also keen to make his presence felt, and in the early months of the war while the division was training in England the divisional historian recorded that he was ‘almost embarrassingly fond of the front area, keen to know what each platoon, what each section was doing, keen to take part in any action.’15

  In February 1939 the Cabinet had taken the momentous decision to commit its armed forces to a continental role by forming an expeditionary force for service in France in support of the French Army. This would consist of four Regular infantry divisions, a mobile division and four Territorial divisions, but time was fast running out. Having been starved of funding there was much to be done to bring those formations up to strength and to find the necessary personnel and equipment. It was very much a race against time: by summer even the Regular divisions had only half of the required numbers of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, and stocks of ammunition were completely inadequate to fight a protracted campaign. Nevertheless, plans were pushed ahead for the BEF to take its place on the left of the French Army in north-eastern France, with the Territorial divisions joining them as they became ‘ready’. In fact the deployment was completed fairly quickly, and within five weeks of the outbreak of hostilities the four Regular divisions were in position under the overall command of Field Marshal Lord Gort VC, with I Corps (1st and 2nd Divisions) under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir John Dill and II Corps (3rd and 4th Divisions) under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Brooke. Including the Highland Division and the 52nd (Lowland) Division which landed in Normandy later in 1940 (see below), there were thirty-six Scottish infantry battalions in France, the others being (in order of precedence):

  1st Royal Scots: 4 Brigade, 2nd Division

  1st KOSB: 9 Brigade, 3rd Division

  1st Black Watch, 12 Brigade, 4th Division

  1st Camerons: 5 Brigade, 2nd Division

  1st Gordons: 2 Brigade, 1st Division

  4th Gordons: II Corps Machine-gun Battalion

  6th Argylls: I Corps Machine-gun Battalion

  In addition 1st Fife and Forfar Yeomanry served with 1 Light Reconnaissance Brigade (earlier it had been part of the 51st Division), and when 5th Infantry Division arrived as reinforcements in December it included 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers, 2nd Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) and 6th Seaforths, which had previously served in 51st (Highland) Division.

  Although there was inevitable grumbling from the reservists, especially from those who had only just settled down into civilian jobs, morale in the BEF was reasonably good. Three weeks after the declaration of war, 1st Black Watch crossed over to France after being inspected by the regimental Colonel-in-Chief King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth. Their one sadness was the order to hand in the kilt in place of battle-dress, a move which was explained by the operational reason to prevent the regiment being recognised by the enemy. It was not well received; one company sergeant-major being heard to remark, ‘But damn it, we want to be identified.’16 Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Wimberley commanding 1st Cameron Highlanders was equally scornful, writing in his diary that:

  An attack has been made on the Highland Regiments as to their wearing their kilts in battle in Europe . . . the kilt as a battledress was being attacked from three angles. On the grounds of (unit) security, on grounds of its inadequacy in case of gas attack and on grounds of difficulty of supply in war. There was also the tinge of jealousy – why should the kilted regiments be given preferential treatment to wear a becoming kilt. The thickness of the kilt and its seven yards of tartan was extra protection. It was traditional in all highland regiments never to wear any garment in the way of pants under the kilt. But anti-gas pants were issued.17

  Before embarking for France in January 1940, 5th Gordons went one further by mounting a symbolic parade at Bordon in Hampshire during which a single kilt was ceremonially burned. A stone memorial marked the spot inscribed ‘We hope not for long’. The battalion was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Alick Buchanan-Smith, a veteran of the previous war.

  To defeat the western allies the German plan called for the invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, using two army groups to smash through the southern Netherlands and central Belgium while a diversionary attack was made through the Ardennes. The ultimate goal of this Fall Gelb (Plan Yellow) was control of the Channel ports as a prelude to invading Britain. However, Hitler prevaricated, the plans were subjected to constant change and there were delays in correcting the balance of ground forces. At the same time the French dithered and ordered an unnecessary move into the Saarland which did nothing to alter the strategic balance in the Allies’ favour and introduced a sense of demoralisation and defeatism. As for the British, they eventually deployed thirteen infantry divisions (five Regular, eight Territorial) in France, but there was little armour and not much in the way of air cover. Compared to the Luftwaffe’s 4,200 warplanes the Allies possessed only 2,000, half of which were fighter aircraft. In qualitative terms the German machines were also superior, and their air crews enjoyed better training and superior tactics; wisely the Royal Air Force held back its valuable Spitfire fighters for the defence of the British homeland.

  Hitler had intended to launch the invasion of France as early as mid-November, but the onset of winter weather hindered armoured operations, and in January 1940 the plans had to be changed again when a copy fell into Allied hands. A new plan, code-named Sichelschnitt (Sickle Stroke), changed the weight of the attack to the south where Army Group A would attack through the rugged and supposedly impenetrable forests of the Ardennes before racing north to the Channel ports. To counter the threat, the Allied supreme commander General Maurice-Gustave Gamelin had produced Plan D which would see thirty-three British and French divisions moving eastwa
rds to invade Belgium as soon as the German attack began. Once on Belgian territory they would take up station along the Dyle Line – a defensive position which ran along the River Dyle to Wavre. At the last minute it was extended north to Breda and the River Maas, the idea being to present the Germans with a defensive line which ran from Antwerp to the heavily fortified Maginot Line at Longuyon.

  During this period 51st (Highland) Division was deemed to be ‘combat ready’, and crossed over to France at the beginning of January 1940, landing at Le Havre before moving by rail to a concentration area near the towns of Lillebonne and Bolbec. Unlike the experience of the First World War when military bands and excited crowds had greeted the arrival of the BEF, the soldiers of 51st (Highland) Division were given a muted welcome; one corporal in 4th Camerons remembered that the billets were barns shared with cattle and that the bedding amounted to ‘a cart of evil-smelling hay’.18 The division’s first task was fairly agricultural too – digging an anti-tank ditch in the rear area, a thankless task which counted for little as the Allied plan was to move into Belgium once the Germans began their attack. This eventually happened in March when the division moved forward towards Bailleul. At the same time there was a change in the order of battle when it was decided to strengthen the division by adding three regular battalions to replace three TA battalions, one from each of the brigades. As a result 1st Black Watch replaced 6th Black Watch in 154 Brigade, 2nd Seaforths replaced 6th Seaforths in 152 Brigade, and 1st Gordons took the place of 6th Gordons in 153 Brigade.19