Part 14 (2/2)

”Who's for the Gathering, who's for the Fair?

(Gay goes the Gordon to a fight.) The bravest of the brave are at deadlock there.

(Highlanders! March! By the right!) There are bullets by the hundred buzzing in the air: There are bonny lads lying on the hillsides bare; But the Gordons know what the Gordons dare When they hear their pipes playing.

--'The Gay Gordons,' by Henry Newbolt.

”One hundred and thirty years ago the bagpipes of the 'Gay Gordons' first swirled the pibroch. Since then they have played it in every clime and nearly every land where British troops have fought.

”The Duke of Gordon was granted a 'Letter of Service'

in 1794 to organize a Highland infantry regiment among his clansmen. Lady Gordon, 'The Darling d.u.c.h.ess,' took charge of the enlisting. Their son, the Marquis of Huntley, was the first colonel.

”The Gordons first saw service against the French in Holland in 1799. Outnumbered six to one, they received their baptism of fire in a wild charge at Egmont-op-Zee that made all Great Britain ring with their praises.

Their first laurels, won at a b.l.o.o.d.y cost, have never been dimmed.

”From Holland they went to Egypt, and with the Black Watch, the Cameronians and the Perths.h.i.+re Greybreeks stormed up the sh.o.r.e of Aboukir Bay and later the height of Mandora. The name of every battle of Napoleon's futile attempt to master Egypt appears on their battle flags.

”They came home from there to line the streets of London at Nelson's funeral, a post of honor coveted by every British regiment. Next they appeared in Denmark and were at the fall of Copenhagen. Without a visit to Scotland the Gordons went to Spain and went through the glorious campaign of Sir John Moore. The French long remembered them for their fight at Corunna.

”When the British were retreating, the Gordons were the rear guard. At Elvania Sir John galloped along their line. Ammunition was low and no supplies available.

”'My brave Highlanders! You still have your bayonets!

Remember Egypt!' the commander shouted.

”The pipers took up 'The c.o.c.k o' the North,' the sobriquet of the Duke of Gordon, and routed the pursuing French. The Gordons went to Portugal. Almarez is on their flags. They followed the Duke of Wellington back into Spain and were in the fights that sent Joseph Bonaparte's army reeling home.

”The Gordons stood with the Black Watch at Quatre Bras, and two days later were at Waterloo. It was the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond, a daughter of the d.u.c.h.ess of Gordon who recruited the Gordons, who gave the famous ball in Brussels the night before Waterloo. The officers of the Gay Gordons hurried from that levee, which Lord Byron, another Gordon, has commemorated in a poem, to the field of battle.

”The feat of the Gordons that day, in grabbing the stirrups of the charging Scots Greys, is one of history's most stirring pages. It is a striking coincidence that in the present war, just ninety-nine years later, the Gordons swung to the Greys' stirrups in another wild charge, this time against the Germans.

”The Gordons went to the Afghan War in 1878. In 1881 they campaigned across the veldts against the Boers.

The next year they stood at El-Teb and Tel-el-Kebir with their old friends the Black Watch. They marched to Khartum when their namesake, Gordon, was trapped. That over, they went back to India for another Afghan war.

They marched by the scenes of their b.l.o.o.d.y fights when going to the relief of Lucknow.

”In 1897 the Gordons were the heroes of all Britain.

They, and a regiment of Gurkhas, charged a hill at Dargai in the face of almost superhuman difficulties.

Two years later the regiment went to South Africa and fought valiantly through that war. At Eldanslaagte they were part of the column of General French, their present commander.

”The red uniform coat of the Gordons is lavishly trimmed in yellow, which brought them the sobriquet of 'Gay Gordons.' Of all the Scotch regiments it has tried the hardest to keep its ranks filled with Scotsmen, 'limbs bred in the purple heather.'

”Officially the Gordons are the Ninety-second Highland Infantry.”

England's original expeditionary force to the continent in 1914 was less than 200,000 men. Suppose it had been 1,200,000. It might just as well have been 1,200,000, if a Scotch Homecroft Reserve had been long ago established, as should have been done, and gradually increased until a million men were enlisted in it. Would any one question the fact, if there had been another million men in England's expeditionary army when it was first sent to the continent, that it would have completely changed the whole current of events in this war? It would have checked the German advance into France and Belgium. Not a foot of Belgium's territory would have been wrested from her. Neither Brussels nor Antwerp would have been surrendered.

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