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Fitzroy Maclean
The Story of the Lovat Scouts 1900-1980 Michael Leslie Melville (The Saint Andrew Press pp. 132,£6.75) The story is told of an old lady in Skye who remarked proudly to a visitor: 'I have one son in the Lovat Scouts and one in the Merchant Navy. The other two are in the British Army.' Certainly the Lovat Scouts have always been a regiment with a difference. Raised by the 29-year-old Lord Lovat in 1900 to fight in South Africa, they were, in a way, a prototype for what 40 years later was to become known as a 'private army', a unit, in other words, recruited by one or more enterprising characters from among their own friends and acquaintances for a specific military purpose. Like other such units, the Scouts were inclined to take a rather idiosyncratic view of life. It's all right to take soldiering seriously in peace', said one long-serving officer with great good sense, tut you should never do so in war'.
For all that, Lord Lovat's purpose was an eminently serious one. In the early stages of the Boer War, the British in South Africa found themselves at a disadvantage. The Boers, not unnaturally, knew their own country much better than they did and made more skilful use of it. They were also better shots, more mobile, more sensibly equipped and, like all good guerrillas, managed to retain the element of surprise by suddenly emerging from the allencompassing veldt and then vanishing with equal suddenness back into it. Nor was British generalship all that it might have been. Indeed one enemy prisoner is said to have declared that for the Boers it was a capital offence to shoot a British general.
Lord Lovat's idea in raising his regiment, which, owing to his personal popularity and standing in the Highlands, was something he was uniquely qualified to do, was to take the Boers on at their own game. In this the Scouts were remarkably successful. Recruited from stalkers and ghillies from his own and neighbouring estates and commanded by Highland officers with the same innate feel for country and knowledge of how to use it, they were able to tackle the Boers in a way ordinary troops could never have done. Having joined the Highland Brigade, with whom they had many close links, they were used precisely as they were intended to be used, namely as scouts, and in this role quickly proved their value. 'The mountain range to my front,' wrote the Army Commander, 'concealed forces whose numbers and whereabouts were a mystery. It possessed ins and outs, shepherd tracks, even occasional cart roads, none marked on maps. To get news, Lovat Scouts were used. The idea was General Macdonald's, instigated by Lord Lovat. In ones, twos and threes these men crept, climbed and spied, were absent for days at a time, but always came safely back with the truth discovered. Major Hon. Andrew Murray, who commanded them, Captain Lord Lovat who raised them, and each officer and man in the corps is a picked man and a specialist. As scouts, spies, guides, on foot or on pony, as individual marksmen or as a collective body in the fighting line, they are a splendid band of Scotsmen, which is the highest compliment I can pay them'. In short they furnished abundant proof of the value of a unit specially recruited and specially trained for special tasks.
Re-formed as Yeomanry in time for the First World War, the Scouts were employed to good effect, if wastefuly, in the otherwise disastrous Gallipoli Campaign of 1915, giving valuable service as snipers and being ultimately chosen to cover the retreat from Suvla Bay. After which they were used in Macedonia as an additional battalion of Cameron Highlanders in an ordinary infantry role, making the best of the opportunities this offered for fighting patrols in which they excelled. Meanwhile, with the encouragement of Sir Douglas Haig, Lord Lovat had raised a force of Sharpshooters for employment as snipers and long-range observers on the Western Front, where they were eventually joined by the battalion from Macedonia. Having fought well as dismounted yeomanry at Gallipoli and as ordinary infantry in Macedonia, the Scouts were now at long last again employed in their true role and made the most of it.
The First World War had been in the main a war of position. Useful roles had nevertheless been found for the Scouts when possible. Being very largely a war of movement, the Second World War offered innumerable opportunities for a unit such as theirs. How ironical, therefore, that at a time when Lord Lovat's son was winning enduring fame as a Commando leader, while his nephew David Stirling raised the SAS in the Middle East, the Lovat Scouts should have been used to garrison the Faroe Isles and only employed in anything approaching their proper role in Italy in the last nine months of the war, when, after being trained as mountain reconnaissance troops, they were thrown into the heavy fighting for the Gothic Line as infantry and when they once again greatly distinguished themselves, latterly under the command of Cameron of Lochiel, whose father had commanded the Sharpshooters in France 30 years before. Today, after various vicissitudes, including a determined, but unfortunately unsuccessful attempt in the Fifties to restore them to something more like their proper role, they survive as a single company of the 51st Highland Volunteers. Considering what has happened to the British Army at one time or another during the past 81 years, it is no mean achievement to have retained their Identity for as long as they have. Is it too much to hope that before too long someone With Lord Lovat's vision and imagination Will realise that at the present time there is a greater need than ever for units of the kind that he first devised?
Given its intrinsic interest and the important military and other lessons to be learned from it, it is astonishing that the story of the Lovat Scouts should never before have been written. I do not, however, believe that it could have been better done than it now has. In less than 140 pages Michael Leslie Melville, who joined the Scouts straight from the Corps at Eton and ultimately commanded them, gives a highly readable account of their history in peace and in war, much enlivened by numerous, enjoyable stories and apt quotations. Moreover, unlike all too many regimental historians, he skilfully sets his narrative against its proper historical and strategic background, thereby making it of even greater interest.
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