Tough, loyal and proud

In the second in our series looking at Scotland’s army regiments, we focus on The Highlanders, the proud descendants of five famous Scottish fighting units. As Mark Nicholls discovered, they recruit over large tracts of some of Scotland’s most beautiful and challenging terrain

The image is irresistible: a lone piper stepping into the fray bravely playing on to stir his comrades into action in the face of withering enemy fire.

There are such tales within the annals of Scottish military history.

Piper Kenneth Mackay famously stepped outside the relative safety of the regimental square to inspire fellow soldiers to repel continuous French cavalry charges at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. And with similar bravery Piper Findlater, on the North West Frontier of India in 1897, urged the men on with a rousing battle tune and continued to play despite being shot in both ankles.

These were men as tough and rugged as the terrain they came from. They fought with regiments that were fore-bears of the modern day Highlanders and then, as now, a good number came from these northern parts of Scotland.

The bagpipes, the tartan and the history are still vivid for today’s Scottish soldier and those who wear the regi-mental badge of The Highlanders have a clear and strong link with their ancestry.

They are the modern day representatives of Scotland’s more illustrious regiments, with names that bring to life a long military history with origins in the latter part of the 18th Century: The Gordon Highlanders; The Cameron Highlanders; the Stirlingshire Regiment; and the 72nd and 78th Highlanders who were formed in 1881 into the Seaforth Highlanders.

By 1961 they had become the Queen’s Own Highlanders and from 1994 The Highlanders, the regiment as it is today which h.....

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By Mark Nicholls

Section : Scottish Regiments

Page number : 44