Captain McAinsh, the Padre, Sergeant Houston and NCO's of the 8th Argylls Belgium 1919.
A Brief History Of The
ARGYLL & SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS
During The Great War
When the Great War broke out in 1914 the Regiment had two Regular Battalions (1st and 2nd), two Militia Battalions (3rd and 4th) and five Territorial Battalions (5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th each of which split into 1st, 2nd and 3rd-line Battalions). Seven more Service Battalions were raised for 'Kitchener's Army' and they were numbered 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th.
Ten of the Battalions served in France and Flanders (1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 14th) gaining 65 Battle Honours and four served in the Mediterranean area (1st, 5th, 6th and 12th) gaining a further 13 Battle Honours.
431 Officers and 6475 Other Ranks of the Regiment lost their lives during the war, a number that approximates to today's population of Oban, the largest town in Argyll. Six Victoria Crosses were awarded to members of the Regiment.
"The 91st (1st Bn) were in India when the German war broke out. Their service during 1914-18 was, as often in the past, exacting but generally unrewarding. They were brought back to France for the Second Battle of Ypres, where they earned another battle honour and special commendation from Sir John French. Thereafter they were in the forgotten theatre of Salonika, shoring up the weakening resistance of Serbs and Greeks, sometimes heavily engaged, but mostly contending with the climate and its attendant diseases, until the Bulgarian surrender on 30 September 1918 heralded the end of the war. By then they had only 237 all ranks on the ration strength; and half of them were employed on line of communications.
It was the turn of the 93rd (2nd Bn) to be in the thick of things. They went through the whole mill of fighting in France during 1914-18, winning golden laurels at Le Cateau in their first engagement, and thereafter suffering all the disasters experienced by every regiment engaged in the futile battle of Loos and on the Somme. They missed the worst of Passchendaele, but covered themselves with glory in the defence of Polygon Wood in the Third Battle of Ypres in September 1917. At Arras and in Polygon Wood they suffered the same sort of disaster as had overtaken them at New Orleans a hundred years before; and each time they showed the same resilience and, reinforced, returned to the battle with courage and morale unimpaired. There was more than an echo of Sir Colin Campbell's address to the 93rd at Balaklava in Sir Douglas Haig's immortal Order of the Day to his army at the crisis of the Germans offensive in March 1918 to 'fight on to the end' with their backs to the wall. The 93rd responded to Sir Douglas as they had to Sir Colin; and the armistice found them, still full of fight, close by Le Cateau where they had started the war.
Volumes could be, and indeed have been, written on the achievements of the five Territorial battalions and six service battalions which the Argylls put into the field between 1914 and 1918. Special mention should perhaps be made of the 8th Argyllshire Battalion, the most genuinely Highland of all, which distinguished itself even within the 51st Highland Division which the Germans listed as one of the most formidable fighting formations in the Allied Army."
Officers of the 11th Argylls prior to the Third Battle of Ypres 1917
Hall of Honour Scottish National War Memorial, Edinburgh Castle, Scotland
The most fitting short summary of the service of the (Argylls) is inscribed on the tablet in the moving shrine built into Edinburgh Castle as the Scottish National War Memorial:
'Ne Obliviscaris'
TO THE MEMORY
OF 431 OFFICERS AND
6,475 OTHER RANKS
OF THE REGIMENT
WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES
FOR KING AND COUNTRY
1914-1918
