35 / 44
battle of loos
33
In a letter to friends in Perth, a Black Watch soldier
wrote,
‘There is only one thing I should like to say.
I am proud to belong to the 8th Battalion, which has
kept up the traditions of the famous Black Watch.
Scotsmen proved their worth last Saturday, Sunday and
Monday’.
57
Reflecting on the losses incurred in the
battle he was similarly bullish.
‘I am only sorry to say that Scotland paid heavily
for the advance, and so did some of the English
regiments, but the Scotsmen died fighting’.
58
These
sentiments are evident in Lieutenant-Colonel Lloyd’s
speech to the remnants of 9th Black Watch.
‘My comrades ... just about a year ago, when we
were first formed into a battalion, we hoped to
be able, by our conduct, to prove ourselves at
any rate worthy descendants of our two great
parent battalions, the 42nd and the 73rd.
And now, whenever you look back on Saturday,
the 25th September 1915, you will do so with
conscious pride, that not only have you proved
yourselves trustworthy, and upheld those great
traditions, but that on the very first day the
9th Battalion went into action they themselves
wrote a fresh and glorious page in the history
of the regiment; and what more could man
desire?’
59
In the opinion of Sergeant A. Wright, a Motherwell
man in the 9th Gordons, ‘It was the flower of
Scotland who led the charge, and carried it through
successfully. When I say the flower of Scotland, I
mean the young men of Scotland, who are just in
their prime and never soldiered before’.
60
The fighting
spirit of the Scottish soldier was still very much
intact.
57 Perthshire Advertiser and Strathmore Herald, Saturday, 9 October 1915, 3.
58 Ibid.
59 The Evening Telegraph and Post, Monday, 11 October 1915, 1.
60 The Motherwell Times, Friday, 29 October 1915, 7.