The history of Scots Guards: How ‘The Kiddies’ became a major British army asset

The Scots Guards do their fair share of such ceremonial duties, and though it can be difficult to tell each regiment apart as they all wear the uniform of scarlet tunics, very dark trousers and bearskin caps, the Scots Guards are distinguished by their buttons in groups of threes and the lack of a plume on their bearskins – that’s because they traditionally fought in the centre of the battle line and did not need a plume to identify them or which wing they were to fight on.

Such ceremonies in London are their most high-profile activities, but each regiment of Guards has an illustrious history of service in many theatres of war, and none more so than the Scots Guards.

In this series on the history of famous Scottish regiments, I used the template provided by the Royal Regiment of Scotland to track the history of the current battalions back to their foundation regiments such as the Royal Scots and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. It was pointed out to me that I would not be including the Scots Guards if I stuck to that template, and I quite agreed that would be a nonsense. So today I will tell the history of this famous regiment and next week I will conclude this series by looking at the Territorials and famous “lost” regiments, especially the Cameronians.

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I have concentrated in this series on regimental histories of past centuries, and have tended to draw the line about 1970, as I do with most subjects, because like Sir Walter Scott himself, I tend not to consider things to be history if the stories are about things that happened less than 50 years ago.

That being said, I will immediately break my own rule by including an event from as recently as 1982, namely the famous involvement of the Scots Guards in the climactic battle for Mount Tumbledown during the Falklands War.

Let’s do the early history first: the Scots Guards of today can trace their lineage back to 1642 and the raising of a regiment of 1500 men to act as life guards for King Charles I in Ireland. The 1st Marquess of Argyll, the chief of Clan Campbell, raised the regiment, and the fact that he already had his own regiment meant he simply transferred his troops en masse to what became known as the Marquess of Argyll’s Royal Regiment, with the commander in the field being Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, kinsman of the Marquess.

Colonel Auchinbreck made a big mistake in Ireland, where he allowed his men – he may even have encouraged them – to ravage the lands in Antrim that belonged to clans who were kin to the Mac Colla family. With the war of the Three Kingdoms well under way, Argyll’s Regiment came back to Scotland to fight against the Royalist forces of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose. With Alasdair Mac Colla and his Irish troops alongside, Montrose won a series of victories for King Charles, including the rout of Campbell forces at Inverlochy in 1645. Captured and brought before Alasdair Mac Colla, Auchinbreck was asked if he wanted to be longer or shorter – hanged or beheaded? The first colonel of the regiment was duly decapitated by one sweep of Mac Colla’s huge sword.

Argyll’s Regiment became known as the Irish Companies for a while, and after the execution of Charles I in 1649, they joined the Scottish army of Charles II who immediately made the regiment his “Lyfe Guard of Foot” with the colonel being Argyll’s son Lord Lorne. They fought against the invading New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell at Dunbar in 1650 and tradition has it that the regiment was one of the few which stood their ground as the Scottish army was all but wiped out.

Enough survived to attend Charles II when he was crowned King of Scots at Scone on Ne’erday 1651. Argyll himself did the coronation, and the regiment fought for Charles II only to be scattered after the Battle of Winchester.

AFTER the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, Charles II had the Marquess of Argyll beheaded for treason because he had dealings with Cromwell and his Commonwealth while the king was in exile. Charles nevertheless decided that the regiment should be re-created as his Scottish Foot Guards, and the Earl of Linlithgow was appointed as Colonel. Thus in the fashion of the time, it became known as Linlithgow’s Regiment.

They were successful against the Covenanters and in 1686 became part of the established army, soon to be used by the Duke of Marlborough in the war against France. The regiment was now known colloquially as the Scots Guards, nicknamed the “kiddies” because they were third in line after the Coldstream and Grenadier Guards.

The first of many regimental battle honours was gained at the Siege of Namur in 1695, but the regiment missed out on the War of the Spanish Succession, kept at home for garrison duties. It was not until the War of the Austrian Succession and the Battle of Dettingen in 1743 that the regiment won its second battle honour for its stout defence in the face of a cavalry attack.

Troops of the Scots Guards during Trooping the Colour at Horse Guards Parade

The Scots Guards, then named the 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards, were now seen as major asset in the British Army. Part of the regiment fought in the American War of Independence while another detachment found itself called on for an unusual service – defending the Bank of England during the Gordon Riots of 1780. Foot Guards continued to provide that service until as recently as 1973.

The regiment played a distinguished part in the war with Revolutionary France and the Napoleonic Wars which followed. They served in Egypt and throughout the Peninsular War, and then winning everlasting renown at Waterloo where the regiment’s light companies under Lieutenant Colonel Macdonnell, later General Sir James Macdonnell, held the strategically vital farm of Hougoumont in the face of huge French attacks, suffering 200 men killed or wounded. The Duke of Wellington wrote: “The success of the Battle of Waterloo turned on the closing of the gates of Hougoumont.”

King William IV approved the re-naming of the regiment as the Scots Fusilier Guards and in that guise they entered the Crimean War, fighting at the battles of Alma and Inkerman and in the Siege of Sevastapol, winning four of the newly-established Victoria Crosses during that bloody war which saw the Guards take part in numerous bayonet charges and hand-to-hand combats. In all the regiment has won 11 VCs.

IN 1877, Queen Victoria approved the formal naming of the regiment as the Scots Guards, and they then fought in Egypt and took part in the expedition for the Relief of Khartoum before service in the Boer War in which the Guards lost 287 men but never lost a single prisoner to the Boers.

The Forces War Records website records that “in 1911 part of the 1st Battalion took part in the famous Siege of Sydney Street, a notorious gunfight in London’s East End against a politically motivated gang of burglars and international anarchists.”

The First World War saw a huge number of serving soldiers, with its two battalions on the Western Front for the duration. The regiment gained no fewer than 31 Battle Honours and five VCs.

They famously took part in the Christmas Truce of 1914, and tried to have one again in 1915, for which Scots Guard officer Sir Ian Colquhoun of Luss was the only man punished, though he was soon returned to the regiment.

During that first Christmas Truce, the body of Captain Hugh Taylor was located. On January 2, 1915, the Newcastle Daily Journal carried an eye witness account of Captain Taylor’s death from a wounded Scots Guard Private named Power. He recounted the initial attack: “[W]e had proceeded about 50 yards when the enemy turned on us a deadly and disastrous machine and rifle fire. Many of the Scots Guards fell but the others rushed forward undaunted ... it was in this charge that Captain Taylor was wounded. We were nearing the German line when the officer was noticed to fall. Two men went back to fetch him but when they found him, he shouted ‘Go on, leave me. I am all right. Look after yourselves.’ The men obeyed ... He was never afterwards seen by any of the men in our battalion. The general impression among the men was that the wound proved fatal, or that he was taken prisoner and died subsequently.”

“He was a brave soldier and a good officer,” added Private Power, “and we were all grieved to lose him. He was a real hero.”

Captain Taylor was mentioned in Sir John French’s dispatches dated January 14, 1915 “for gallant and distinguished conduct on this and other occasions.” Private James Mackenzie of the second battalion of the Scots Guards won the Victoria Cross for his actions at this time, whilst acting as a stretcher bearer.

Born in Kirkcudbrightshire on April 2, 1889, he enlisted in the Scots Guards in February 1912. The citation stated: “For conspicuous bravery at Rouge Bancs on the 19th December in rescuing a severely wounded man from in front of the German trenches, under a very heavy fire and after a stretcher bearer party had been compelled to abandon the attempt. Private Mackenzie was subsequently killed on that day whilst in the performance of a similar act of gallant conduct”.

A fellow soldier wrote: “He was returning to the trenches along with me and another stretcher bearer when it occurred. We had only two or three cases that morning, so the last one was taken by us three. After we took the wounded soldier to hospital, we returned to see if there were any more. There was a very dangerous place to pass, I went first, followed by another, then James came behind, which caused his death. He was shot in the heart by a sniper, and only lived five minutes.”

The regiment lost nearly 3000 officers and men in this war, with many more wounded.

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There was less carnage in the Second World War, but 98 officers and 943 other ranks of the Regiment lost their lives between 1939 and 1945. The regiment fought in North Africa and across Europe from Norway in 1940 to the Nazi surrender. The 2nd battalion suffered heavy casualties at the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy while a 3rd (tank) battalion was raised and fought in Normandy after D-Day.

The regiment served during the various conflicts when the Empire was being dismantled after the war, but it was in the Falklands War that the Scots Guards fought arguably their most famous and most publicised battles.

After Argentina’s fascist invasion of the Falklands, the regiment sailed to the South Atlantic on the QEII, and landed at San Carlos on June 2, 1982. The Argentine forces blocked the way to the capital Port Stanley from entrenched positions on Mount Tumbledown but on the night of June 14, the Guards attacked and cleared the mountain of the invaders, with the loss of eight men and 41 wounded.

Almost 40 years on, that engagement has passed into the history of the Scots Guards and indeed is the final battle honour on their long list of such accolades.