Always known by its initials HLI, The Highland Light Infantry also rejoiced in its nickname ‘Hell’s Last Issue’. Its proper name notwithstanding, The Highland Light Infantry was closely associated not with the Scottish Highlands but with Glasgow, drawing most of its recruits from the city’s heavy industrial areas where men were tough, proud and resilient; in return the people of Glasgow took a fierce pride in their local regiment. In 1923 that relationship was cemented by the addition of ‘City of Glasgow Regiment’ to the regiment’s formal title. One incident among many others in the regiment’s long history underlines the strength and endurance of that connection.
Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, Glasgow City Corporation gave approval for the formation of a volunteer infantry battalion drawn from the city’s public transport system which would serve in the HLI. Wearing their green uniforms and marching behind a pipe band, more than 800 motormen and conductors of the tramways department paraded through the city on 7 September 1914 before presenting themselves for enlistment. Under the direction of James Dalrymple, Glasgow’s transport manager, the Coplawhill tramways depot became a giant recruiting hall and it took just sixteen hours to enlist the members of what would become the 15th (Tramways) Battalion, Highland Light Infantry.
A Guard of Honour formed by 1st Battalion The Highland Light Infantry marches out of the Citadel in Cairo on 4 July 1946. The ceremony marked the formal handover of the Citadel to Egyptian control and was the first step towards ending British rule in Egypt.
Encouraged by that success, official approval was then given to the city’s Boys’ Brigade to form a 16th (Boys Brigade) Battalion, a move that caused a great deal of public excitement in the city. ‘Never will it be said that men who were connected with the Boys’ Brigade throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom and Ireland funked in the hour of Britain’s need,’ noted a patriotic journalist in the Glasgow Post. A few days later, a third HLI ‘pals’ battalion, numbered 17th, was formed at the instigation of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce with recruits being enrolled in the Lesser Hall of the Merchants House before parading, still in their city suits outside, the Stock Exchange.
That togetherness reaped a bitter harvest during the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916 when all three battalions were in action throughout the five-month battle and suffered heavy casualties. Among those who went over the top on the first day of the battle, 1 July, was the Treasurer of the Glasgow Boys’ Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel David Laidlaw, commanding 16th Highland Light Infantry, who remembered that his men were ‘singing and whistling as if they were going to a football match instead of one of the most serious encounters in the world’s history’. By the day’s end 554 had been killed or wounded while carrying out their attack on a heavily defended German position known as the Leipzig Salient on the Thiepval Ridge. Scarcely an area of Glasgow was left unaffected and in the days that followed the casualty lists in the Glasgow Herald were thick with local names. The two other Volunteer battalions suffered equally grievously and, fittingly, the sacrifice of the 651 officers and men of the 15th (Tramways) Battalion is commemorated by a memorial in the city’s Transport Museum.
Paradoxically for such a quintessential Glasgow regiment, the HLI was formed in 1881 from two regiments which originally had little to do with the city or, indeed, the west of Scotland. The 71st (Highland) Foot was raised in 1777 by John Mackenzie, Lord Macleod, a member of a noted Jacobite family. Seventeen of its original officers were all called Mackenzie and at its first muster at Elgin in Moray its complement was predominantly Highland, from the ancestral lands of the Cromartie MacKenzies - Castle Leod, Coigach and Tarbat. All told, the new regiment consisted of 840 Highland Scots, 236 Lowland Scots and 38 Englishmen and Irishmen (some of these would have been Welsh). In 1809 the 71st was ordered to become a light infantry regiment and to adopt the rifle-green uniform, weapons and drill of similar regiments. When the regiment protested that it did not want to lose its Highland status the War Office relented and conceded that ‘there is no objection to the 71st being denominated Highland Light Infantry Regiment, or to the retaining of their pipes, and the Highland garb for their pipers’. Initially the men wore regulation green light infantry trousers but in 1834 they started wearing trews in Lamont tartan.
In 1787 the second of the HLI’s antecedent regiments, 74th Highlanders, came into being for service in India. Its first Colonel was Major General Sir Archibald Campbell of Inverneil in Argyllshire, who was serving at the time as Governor of Madras, and the management of recruitment, mainly from Lorne and Cowal, was left in the hands of his brothers and Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Forbes. Recruiting was a problem and the 74th was forced to take on more than 300 Lowland Scots but it was still counted as a Highland regiment and wore the government tartan. From the outset the new regiment decided to base its headquarters in Glasgow, in the old barracks in the Gallowgate, thereby beginning the long association between the city and the HLI. Shrewdly, as the commanding officer pointed out at the time, Glasgow was home to many Highlanders and men from the Western Isles who had gone there looking for work.
In 1803, while serving in India during the Mahratta campaign, the 74th took part in the Battle of Assaye under the command of the Hon. Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington). Following victory, the three British regiments involved in the battle were given the unique honour of being allowed to carry a third Colour, the Assaye Colour, which is of white silk bearing the figure of an elephant surrounded by a laurel wreath and the name Assaye.
After the amalgamation of the two regiments in 1881, the HLI served in Egypt and India and in December 1899 the 1st Battalion was involved in the disastrous setback at Magersfontein during the Boer War when the highly regarded Highland Brigade was defeated by a smaller Boer force. While in the UK, the two battalions were frequently based at the regimental depot which was housed in Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow. Built on the Ruchill estate in the north of Glasgow and opened in 1872 to meet the need for a larger military presence in the city, the barracks occupied a fifty-four-acre site and throughout its time Maryhill had the feel of a garrison town. By the 1960s the barracks had become obsolete and were demolished to make way for the Wyndford housing estate. All that remains is the original gatehouse. Maryhill Barracks’ other claim to fame is that it was used to interrogate the Nazi deputy leader Rudolf Hess following his mysterious flight to Scotland in 1941.
During the Second World War the regiment supplied two Regular battalions and four Territorial battalions, one of which, the 9th, operated under the title Glasgow Highlanders. Curiously for a regiment with ‘Highland’ in its title, the HLI was not granted leave to wear the kilt until 1947. One of the regiment’s most famous soldiers was Major General Roy Urquhart who commanded the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem in September 1944 and who had joined 1st HLI in 1920. While the battalion was stationed in Malta he befriended a newly enlisted subaltern, the future actor and Hollywood star David Niven, whose presence had not been universally welcomed. Asked to list his preference of regiment while a cadet at Sandhurst, Niven had written as his third choice ‘anything but the HLI’ and was duly commissioned in them.
In 1959 The Highland Light Infantry amalgamated with The Royal Scots Fusiliers (21st) to form The Royal Highland Fusiliers and the new regiment retained its links with Glasgow through its headquarters in Sauchiehall Street. With the formation of The Royal Regiment of Scotland in 2006 it became the new regiment’s 2nd Battalion.
Rolica, Vimiera, Corunna, Fuentes d’Onor, Almaraz, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Nive, Orthes, Peninsula, Waterloo, Sevastopol, Carnatic, Sholinghur, Mysore, Hindoostan, Central India, Cape of Good Hope, Tel-el-Kebir, Egypt, Modder River, South Africa, 1899–1902
Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour
Mons, Retreat from Mons, Marne 1914, Aisne 1914, Ypres 1914, 15, 17, 18, Langemarck 1914, 17, Gheluvelt, Nonnne Bosschen, Givency 1914, Neuve Chapelle, St Julien, Aubers, Festubert 1915, Loos, Somme 1916, 18, Albert 1916, 18, Bazentin, Delville Wood, Pozieres, Flers-Courcelette, Le Transloy, Ancre Heights, Ancre 1916, Arras, 1917, 18, Vimy 1917, Scarpe 1917, 18, Arleux, Pilckem, Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Passchendaele, Cambrai 1917, 18, St Quentin, Bapaume 1918, Lys, Estaires, Messines, 1918, Hazebrouck, Bailleul, Kemmel, Amiens, Drocourt-Queant, Hindenburg Line, Havrincourt, Canal du Nord, St Quentin Canal, Beaurevoir, Courtrai, Selle, Sambre, France and Flanders 1914–18, Gallipoli 1915–18, Rumani, Egypt 1916, Gaza, El Mughar, Nebi Samwil, Jaffa, Palestine 1917–18, Tigris 1916, Kut al Amara 1917, Sharqat, Mesopotamia 1916–18, Murman 1919, Archangel 1919
Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour
Withdrawal to Cherbourg, Odon, Cheux, Esquay, Mont Pincon, Quarry Hill, Estry, Falaise, Seine 1944, Alart, Nederrijn, Best, Scheldt, Lower Maas, South Beveland, Walcheren Causeway, Asten, Roer, Ourthe, Rhineland, Reichswald, Goch, Moyland Wood, Weeze, Rhine, Ibbenburen, Dreierwalde, Aller, Uelzen, Bremen, Artlenberg, North-West Europe 1940, 44–45, Jebel Shiba, Barentu, Keren, Massawa, Abyssinia 1941, Gazala, Cauldron, Mersa Matruh, Fuka, North Africa 1940–42, Landing in Sicily, Sicily 1943, Italy 1943, 45, Athens, Greece 1944–45, Adriatic, Middle East 1944.
The Battalion carried a third colour when on parade – the Assaye Colour, the original of which was presented to the 74th Highlanders by the Honourable East India Company to recognise the part they played in the Battle of Assaye in 1803.
Private George Rodgers, 71st, Indian Mutiny, 1858
Lieutenant (later Major) William Mordaunt Marsh Edwards, 2nd Battalion, Egypt, 1882
Captain the Hon. Alexander Gore Arkwright Hore-Ruthven (later the Earl of Gowrie), 3rd Battalion, Sudan, 1898
Corporal (later Bugle Major) John David Francis Shaul, 1st Battalion, Boer War, 1899
Private Charles Kennedy, 1st Battalion, Boer War, 1900
Private George Wilson, 2nd Battalion, First World War, 1914
Lieutenant (later Lieutenant Colonel) Walter Lorrain Brodie, 2nd Battalion, First World War, 1914
Lance Corporal William Angus, 8th Battalion, First World War, 1915
Sergeant James Youll Turnbull, 17th Battalion, First World War, 1916
Lance Corporal (later Colonel) John Brown Hamilton, 9th Battalion, First World War, 1917
Lieutenant Colonel William Herbert Anderson, 12th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Corporal (later Sergeant) David Ferguson Hunter, 5th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Major Frank Gerald Blaker, The Highland Light Infantry, attached 3rd Battalion, 9th Gurkha Rifles, Second World War, 1944
