T H E C O V E N A N T E R
insurance firms would cover losses through volunteers and the subsequent high rate
the unlawful acts of an emergency but not of fatalities, the performance of Scottish
a war. The recognition of a war would have military formations in 1915 and 1916, the
transferred the whole cost to Britain. militarisation of the Scottish homeland, the
In May 2004 1 visited Worcester Cathedral resistance to war in Glasgow and the west of
and, while in the military chapel, I noticed Scotland, the boom in the heavy industries
there was a recent plaque to the memory of and the strengthening of women’s role
the members The Worcestershire Regiment in society following on from wartime
who were killed or had died in the Malayan employment.
Emergency. I have never seen any other The Flowers of the Forest - Scotland and
memorial to the Emergency before and this the Great War by Trevor Royle - Birlin Press
seemed unfair to me, for the campaign lasted ISBN 1843410303
twice as long as the 2nd WW. In chapel were
two other men and their wives looking at Available from Birlin Press most bookshops
the plaque. One of the men was a former for £25.
CO of the Worcestershires’ and was most
interested in what I told him about five of Dunkirk: Fight To The Last Man - by Hugh
the names. The years that had passed had Sebag-Montefiore
not made it any easier for me to speak about This recently published book contains a new
this sad event. angle on how the 1940 British Expeditionary
Bill Coughlan. Force came to be evacuated from Dunkirk: it
was not just because of the courage of the
Recommended Reading
men on the beaches as they were rescued by
The Flowers of the Forest - Scotland and
the Navy and those celebrated little ships.
the Great War by Trevor Royle - Birlin Press
According to author Hugh Sebag-Montefiore,
ISBN 1843410303
the evacuation would never have taken
place had it not been for the bravery of the
Written and researched by Trevor Royle, one
British soldiers who were left behind to hold
of Britain’s major military historians, this is
back the Germans while the evacuation
the first study to show the massive impact
went ahead.
of Scotland’s role in the defeat of the Kaiser’s
The troops left behind were involved in
Germany.
a series of rearguard actions which were
Today we are as far away from the First
fought to the south of Dunkirk. Battle was
World War as the Edwardians were from
joined there on 27 May 1940, the day after
the Battle of Waterloo, but it casts a shadow
the commencement of the evacuation,
over Scottish life that was never produced
because the British commander-in-chief
by the wars against Napoleon. The country
Lord Gort had decided there was only one
and its people were changed forever by the
way to save the majority of the British
events of 1914-1918. Once the workshop
troops in France: the infantry had to shield
of the empire and an important source of
the corridor up which the British Army was
manpower for the colonies, after the war,
retreating to Dunkirk by holding a string of
Scotland became something of an industrial
strongpoints. They were to stand and fight,
and financial backwater. Emigration
whatever the cost, even if they had to fight
increased as morale slumped in the face of
to the last man.
economic stagnation and decline.
One of the battalion commanders who took
The country had paid a disproportionately
this instruction literally was Lt Col Pop
high price in casualties, a result of the
Gilmore of the 2nd Cameronians. When
larger numbers of volunteers and the use
he was told his men had retreated beyond
of Scottish battalions as shock troops in the
the point in the line they were supposed
fighting on the Western Front and Gallipoli
to hold, he immediately marched them
- young men whom the novelist Ian Hay
back to where they had come from even
called ‘the vanished generation [who] left
though by this stage they were being fired
behind them something which neither time
on by machine guns. The battalion was all
can efface nor posterity belittle.’ There was
but decimated, and Gilmore was seriously
a sudden crisis of national self-confidence,
wounded, but not before he and the few
leading one commentator to suggest in 1927
men left standing had recovered the lost
that ‘the Scots are a dying race.’
ground.
Royle examines related themes such as
It had been a close run victory however,
the overwhelming response to the call for
as the following extract from the newly

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