Argylls

When Ray Ward died in 1999, his sons discovered an old and dusty manuscript in an Afrika Korps ammunition box in the cellar of the family home in Glasgow. These papers contained a collection of their father's memoirs, which detailed his experiences as an infantry officer during the Second World War, when he served in the 1st Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. His memoirs give vivid accounts of Ray Ward's time in Eritrea, Abyssinia, Egypt, the Western Desert, Sicily and mainland Italy, and bring to life individual episodes of bravery, adventure and danger that characterised the North African and Italian campaigns.

My mother’s stories about her brother planted the seed that would take many years to actually bear fruit. Lance Corporal Lorne Andrew Marr was killed in action August 27, 1944 at Igoville, France while serving as a dispatch rider for the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders of Canada. His large extended family was devastated by the news, especially my mother. I could see the pain and loss in her eyes every time she would talk about him and she talked a lot. I grew up with a hunger to find out more about this never seen uncle. The family only talked of him in hushed tones and never in front of my grandmother. Lorne had been born prematurely in a time when very few of these children survived. It was explained to me that Grandma’s shear strength of will kept him alive, which needless to say forged a very special bond between the two. No one knew exactly how Lorne had met his fate. Stories had been told by returning soldiers after the war, but nothing concrete. In my young mind I couldn’t believe that we didn’t know and no one really seemed interested in finding out. I told myself I would someday get to the bottom of his story and maybe even write a book. Little did I know what a truly monumental task I was setting for myself! Not insurmountable as I would find out, but not easy either. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, I found myself in my fiftieth year and had accomplished exactly nothing in regards to this task accepted in my youth. I had made many attempts but seemed to be blocked at every turn. This all changed with a visit from a friend. Dave and I had worked together for quite a while and shared an interest in history. He was planning a trip to France and knowing of my interest in my uncle, asked if he could put flowers on Lorne’s grave for me when he was there. I jumped at the chance and told him I would get right back to him with the gravesite information. I knew I had it at home but couldn’t wait for that. I went onto a much-visited website called the Veteran’s Affairs Canada Virtual War Memorial and accessed the information. He was buried in the Calais Canadian War Cemetery, grave reference 2.B.9. I wrote it down for Dave and was going to sign off when I noticed that there was a place for pictures to be downloaded onto the site. I had always intended to do that but had not gotten around to it. I clicked on it and to my amazement there was a picture there. I knew immediately that it was not a family picture for I managed to accumulate most of those. There was my uncle smiling broadly in his battle-dress with his Glengarry rakishly tilted to one side pictured between two young men around 8 and 10 years of age. He had his arms around both of them with his ever-present pipe in his left hand. The older of the two boys was holding a cat. There was a caption below the picture: “Lorne Marr is seen with Peter Hunter holding their cat, and his brother in Uckfield in 1944 Under that it said, Caption was scanned with photograph. Photograph was found in the publication The Maple Leaf Army in Britain ISBN 0-9521297-7-9, 2002” A thousand questions came to mind. Who exactly were these two kids and how were they connected to my uncle? Who had posted the picture? It said that the picture came from a book. I immediately did a quick search on the Internet and found that the book had been published only in England and was written by a gentleman named Peter Longstaff-Tyrrell. I gave the information to Dave and shared the picture I had found. We both agreed it was a little strange and I would have to check into it a little more. My wife and I got together that night and talked to a friend of hers whose daughter was going to school at Oxford in England and she agreed to have her daughter purchase the book and send it to us. While we waited for the book to come, I pulled all of Lorne’s stuff out of storage. I had no idea that I had accumulated so much over the years. I brought myself up to date on much I had forgotten. I al

The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders is one of the best-known regiments in the British Army. In a previous incarnation as the 93rd Highlanders, its soldiers were famed for being the 'thin red line' that repulsed the Russian heavy cavalry at the Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War. When the regiment was ordered to disband in 1968 as part of wide-ranging defence cuts, a popular 'Save the Argylls' campaign was successful in keeping the regiment in being. In 2006, it became the 5th battalion of the new Royal Regiment of Scotland. Formed by two earlier regiments, The Argylls have a stirring history of service to the British Crown. They served all over the empire, taking part in the Indian Mutiny and the Boer War, and fought in both World Wars. In the post-war period the Argylls captured the public imagination in 1967 when they reoccupied the Crater district of Aden following a period of riots. Recruiting mainly from the west of Scotland, the regiment has a unique character and throughout its history has retained a fierce regimental pride which is summed up by its motto: 'sans peur', meaning 'without fear'. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders puts its story into the context of British military history and makes use of personal testimony to reveal the life of the regiment.

Aden, 20 June 1967: two army Land Rovers burn ferociously in the midday sun. The bodies of British soldiers litter the road. Thick black smoke bellows above Crater town, home to insurgents who are fighting the British-backed Federation government. Crater had come to symbolise Arab nationalist defiance in the face of the world’s most powerful empire. Hovering 2,000 ft. above the smouldering destruction, a tiny Scout helicopter surveys the scene. Its passenger is the recently arrived Commanding Officer of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mitchell. Soon the world’s media would christen him ‘Mad Mitch’, in recognition of his controversial reoccupation of Crater two weeks later. Mad Mitch was truly a man out of his time. Supremely self-confident and debonair, he was an empire builder, not dismantler, and railed against the national malaise he felt had gripped Britain’s political establishment. Drawing on a wide array of never-before-seen archival sources and eyewitness testimonies, Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law tells the remarkable story of inspiring leadership, loyalty and betrayal in the final days of British Empire. It is, above all, a shocking account of Britain’s forgotten war on terror.

Om den engelske 27th Infantry Brigade, senere kendt som 27. Commonwealth Brigade aktiviteter og operationer under Koreakrigen.

The first year of the Korean War was a tumultuous series of epic battles, ending in a legendary and harrowing retreat. In the summer of 1950, British and Australian troops were dispatched to fight with UN forces in the savage struggle against communism in Korea. After both triumph and tragedy while breaking out of the “Pusan Perimeter,” 27th Brigade – the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the Middlesex battalions, soon joined by the Royal Australians – spearheaded the UN drive north. After a spectacular series of battles, victory beckoned. 27th Brigade was halted to allow the Americans the glory of reaching the Chinese border. But across the rugged border, in a shock counter-offensive, China stormed south. In a desperate action, 27th Brigade fought its way out of the trap, to join the UN Command on a harrowing, 200-mile ‘bug out.” And across the peninsula, surrounded by eight enemy divisions in terrain higher than Cassino and temperatures colder than Stalingrad, 41 Commando fought alongside US Marines at Chosin Reservoir – ‘Hellfire Valley’, the most nightmarish battle fought by American or British troops in living memory - and escaped annihilation by a hair’s breadth.