Highland Regiments trivia thread.

[macwilkin]

Macwilkin, I think I must say mea culpa. I seem to have gotten a couple of stories mixed up.

The relationship of the Black Watch to the artillery has to do not with their spats but the red hackle. The Black Watch was awarded the red hackle after recovering guns that had been abandoned by the 11th Light Dragoons at the Battle of Geldermalsen in 1795.

But I also have some vague recollection of a story about the Black Watch loosing the front of the spats after being disgraced in battle ...and I seem to remember it being during the Crimea. Can anyone help with that one?

Farwell's "Mr. Kipling's Army" tells the story about a regiment wanting to start a row with the Black Watch calling for a pint of "Broken Square" around the Jocks in a pub in reference to when Fuzzy-Wuzzies (cue Lance Corporal Jones) broke the square at Tamai in 1882. This sort of thing was referenced in Kipling's poem "Belts":

There was a row in Silver Street -- the regiments was out,
They called us "Delhi Rebels", an' we answered "Threes about!"
That drew them like a hornet's nest -- we met them good an' large,
The English at the double an' the Irish at the charge.

T.