The
War Poets -
The Black Watch
2
Armistice Day
found the Regiment advancing across the very field at Fontenoy where the Watch
had fought 173 years before. The French commemorated the stalwart assistance
given to them in Champagne in 1918 by erecting a cairn on the spot where fell
the body of the Black Watch soldier who advanced the furthest -
'Here shall flourish for ever the glorious thistle of Scotland among the
roses of France'.
The
1st Battalion saw action at the very beginning of the war, taking part in the
retreat from Mons before turning on the Germans at the River Marne. Trench warfare
then set in and the 2nd Battalion arrived from India. Meanwhile the Territorial
battalions were mobilised at the start of the war During 1915 all the Territorial
battalions saw action along the Western Front. Throughout the Great War, 11
Battalions of the Black Watch saw service in France and Flanders, Macedonia,
Mesopotamia, and Palestine.
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