T H E C O V E N A N T E R
pipers play “Highland Laddie” immediately had been wounded before in other battles).
after the second mess call has been sounded Two soldiers of the Black Watch carried
by the Orderly Bugler.
858 In the 2nd Battalion the “Half-Hour
and “Quarter Dress” Calls are sounded on
the bugle only.
859 to 860 Spare
The Solitary Side Drum
Until recently in Chelmsford there was
a double fronted military surplus shop
displaying the expected uniforms, cap
badges, imitation weapons and other items
we used in service life. Someone more
soldierly than myself might well have
reverted to their conditioning and saluted
either to the right or to the left.
Earlier this year I saw a Cameronian side
drum looking smart and small beside the
uniforms. I was told that the drum was
obtained from the MOD: the price was
£350. It was in mint condition and may
have never contributed to the sound of the
Pipe Band of the Cameronians. In exchange
for giving the shop a short written history
of the Cameronians to help sell the drum, I
was allowed to photograph it.
I told the Editor that I was no longer
the sole Cameronian living in Chelmsford
and now had to compete with the circular
object, which had been designed to make
him to his quarters in the citadel; he died
much more noise. He must have passed on
of his wounds. The Norfolk Regiment dug
the information because the drum was sold
his grave under fire: he was quietly buried
to either an ex-Cameronian or someone
‘with his martial cloak around him’ by a
very interested in the regiment. The buyer
Guards chaplain while the attacking French
told the shop that the news of the drum’s
artillery unintentionally disturbed a solemn
existence had come from an ex-bandsman.
occasion. But as Napier wrote: ‘The guns of
The sight of the drum connected my
the enemy paid his funeral honours.’
memory to the poem ‘The Burial of Sir
The death of Sir John Moore took place
John Moore at Corunna.’ by Charles Wolfe
at the end of a 250-mile retreat by a small
because I believed that it had a direct
British army of 29,000. The tired troops,
connection with Cameronians. I will quote
marching in winter weather and short of
the first verse.
food, were being persuaded by Napoleon’s
army of 300,000 to avoid taking in one
“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
of the battles of the Peninsula campaigns
As his corpse to the ramparts we hurried;
of 1808 and 1809. The incident was like
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
an earlier version of Dunkirk because of
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.”
the rear guard action and the post-battle
evacuation by sea. Before their embarkation,
On boy service we were told that those
the British troops at Corunna held up the
of sergeant and above wore black lanyards
French. Correlli Barnett in his ‘British and
because the 26th Cameronian Regt assisted
her Army’ wrote the following on p 259: ‘...
with the burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna
by drawing away Napoleon away from his
in 1809. Although the Cameronians fought
main objective and causing fatal delay and
at Corunna, and were awarded the name as
dislocation in French plans, Moore saved the
a battle honour in 1823, they had nothing
Spanish cause from immediate extinction.’
to do with the burial of John Moore. A grape
Before and during this battle the 26th
shot had shattered Moore’s shoulder (he
Cameronians suffered 25% casualties: they

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