AS PROMISED - SAMPLE CHAPTER FROM SCOTTISH MILITARY DISASTERS - > Book Extract
* He was an Eighteenth Century Scottish Forrest Gump - Stobo
** Here's one that combines Canadian and Scottish themes - Tunnelling for Victory
*** Those who enjoyed reading about the Royal Scots’ Armistice Day battle with the Bolsheviks in 1918might be interested in the same fight as seen from a Canadian viewpoint - Canada’s Winter War
***** Read about the blunder that made Canada an easy target for invasion from the United States - Undefended Border
****** Read about the Second World War's Lord McHaw Haw
******* Serious questionmarks over the official version of one the British Army's most dearly held legends - The Real Mackay?
********** It's been a while since I posted a new article. This one's called Temptation
********** Read about how the most Highland of the Highland regiments during the Second World War fared in the Canadian Rockies - Drug Store Commandos.
************* We now have a Guide to Scottish military museums on this site.
************** Just weeks before the outbreak of the First World War one of Britain's most bitter enemies walked free from a Canadian jail - Dynamite Dillon
*************** Click to read - - Victoria's Royal Canadians - about one of the more unusual of the British regiments.
*************** Read an article about the Royal Scots and their desperate fight against the Bolsheviks on Armistice Day 1918 - Forgotten War A second article, looks at the same battle but through a Canadian lens .
***************No-one has got back to me with a German source for the claim that the kilties during the First World War were known as The Ladies from Hell . See My Challenge to You
***************** A map showing the old Scottish regimental recruiting districts can now be seen by clicking Recruiting Area Map .
****************** The Fighting Men 1746 article now includes the estimated strengths of the Jacobite clan regiments which marched into England in 1745 See Clan Strengths
****************** **I've posted a fresh article - Scotland’s Forgotten Regiments. Guess what it's about.
******************** The High Court Hearing in London in May 2012 attracted a lot of visitors to this site. See Batang Kali Revisited
********************* Why not have a look at Book of the Year
Spy Funding
It turned out that the reporters at the Edmonton Sun were paying for a management spy out of their own pockets. Every year there was a Story of the Year award. It was usually a team effort and the prize money was shared between the reporters involved. The winners usually included one guy who as far as I knew had contributed nothing. But I wasn't involved, so how would I know? Then there was a winning story I was involved in that I knew this guy had made no meaningful contribution. But around then the guy had blown his cover anyway. There was a leaving do at a pub at which it became clear that the reason for the departure was a certain boss. Many others at the pub that night had their own stories about this boss guy's incompetence and sexual harassment. Next day the big boss knew a lot about what was said in the pub. But the odd thing was he only knew what was said after a certain person arrived at the pub - you guessed it, the fellah who regularly shared in the prize money pot despite not working on the winning story of the year. It turned out one of the perks of being a management spy was being put on the list of prize winners for Story of the Year. If he hadn't been, then the real contributors would have one less person to split the prize money with.
Under Age
When I was an underage drinker I was surprised that I wasn't challenged more by the bar staff. Maybe they simply didn't care. But as someone who is now legally classed as an adult I wonder how well a bar full of teenagers would do financially. We were not big spenders. I knew one guy who at 16 used to drink in the same pub as a lot of the teachers. They may even have had beers with him. I wish they could see how he turned out. Hanging out with the kind of guys who leach off kids in a pub isn't a good start in life. As I say, an older guy now, I wonder how we got away with it. I suspect it might have been that to adult most folk under 20 years old look 15 and you can't turn 'em all away. The thing is that teenagers like to be different - though not getting-picked-on different. Anyway they adopt bands and stuff like that as tribal totems. And if you recognise the band name on the Tshirt, or whatever, you can pretty work out how old a person is from their musical taste, or whatever. But a person over-21 and working in bar wouldn't be able to consistently spot the tells.
Shameless Plug #9 - With Wellington was among the books recommended as an excellent Christmas present by the prestigious The Society for Army Historical Research. There was another mysterious surge in sales of With Wellington last summer. At the end of May it was the third best selling book about the Peninsular War on the website of one of Britain's biggest booksellers and Number Eighteen in the table for all Napoleonic books. Last December's sales surge turned out to be a combination of the venerable Scots Magazine declaring it Book of the Month in its January 2015 edition and a highly favourable review in the Napoleonic Association's newsletter. Scots Magazine's reviewer, nature writer and author, Jim Crumley, declared "I don't much care for military memoirs, but I could not put this one down". Other reviewers have been equally enthusiastic - "If you are interested in the memoirs of British soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars this book is a MUST!... You don't get many Napoleonic memoirs as good as this" and "It is the most candid memoir of the British Army I have ever read... does not pull any punches ... highly entertaining, but also thought provoking..." To have a look at the full reviews check out more about With Wellington
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