DSS at QER Memorial Supper 1951

Oration Q.E.R. Memorial Supper 22 June 51
[1/5th  Battalion (Queen's Edinburgh Rifles)T.F. 4.8.14 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh as part of Lothian Brigade. On Coast Defences, Scottish Command. To 88th Brigade, 29th Division on 11.3.15 at Leamington. Embarked at Avonmouth 20.3.15. Arrived at Alexandria 2.4.15. Landed at Gallipoli 25.4.15. To Mudros 18.10.15. To Egypt 7.1.16. Embarked at Port Said 10.3.16 for France, and landed at Marseilles 22.3.16. Left 29th Division to become Lines of Communications troops 24.4.16. Amalgamated with 1/6th Battalion to form 5/6th Battalion 15.6.16. Joined 14th Brigade, 32nd Division, at Bethune on 29.7.16. On 11.11.18 located at Avesnelles, near Avesnes, France.]

Right Worshipful Master, Worshipful Wardens, Brethren, old comrades, old friends:-

Tonight I feel rather like a ghost, what the French call a revenant [one who returns after death] I have the eerie feeling of one who comes back again from a long way off to the unfamiliarity of once familiar things: and I set myself to interpret your feelings and mine from the standpoint of those young men whose bodies are lying in the nullahs and gullies of Gallipoli. How different you are from them and from what you were when they were your comrades: and what a strangely different world you live in.

Although I was not myself one of that gallant band of brothers who endured greatly at Gallipoli, I can claim brotherhood with them by adoption, for I joined the Q.E.R. soon after they were withdrawn from the Peninsula and became heir to their fame. Many a tale I heard of what they did and what they endured and many a march over the sands of Suez [never knew till now that DSS marched over the sands of Suez - never mentioned it even though I was there in 53-54!] was enlivened by catchwords from Gallipoli. I still remember two of these catchwords which at that time quite outvied in popularity “Christmas Day in the Work-house” and the “Old oak chest” [Can’t find].
[Christmas Day In The Workhouse
It was Christmas Day in the cookhouse,.
The happiest day of the year,
Men’s hearts were full of gladness
And their bellies full of beer
When up spoke Private Shortarse
His face as bold as brass
Saying, “You can keep your Christmas pudden; you can stick it up your arse”

It was Christmas day in the harem,
The eunuchs was standing around
And hundreds of beautiful women
Was stretched out on the ground,
When in walked the bold bad sultan
Through his marble halls
Asking “What do you want for Christmas. Boys?”
And the eunuchs answered “Balls!”]
Both of them stripped the tinsel from war and revealed to me the spirit which animated those who fell and those who survived.

One of these catchwords was reminiscent of one of your General Officers - it may have been Hunter Bunter. It ran thus, and with what a gentle mockery they chanted it. “Rivers of blood, piles of dead, heaps of slain.” The other ticked off one of your own officers, who some years later was to fall gloriously in France, but who in a tight corner of the Peninsula had apparently got a bit beyond himself. It was in an Englishy accent “Who will come and die with me?” The groan which followed was expressive of the matter-of-factness of the average British soldier. With what a sweet cynicism they smothered all attempts at the mock heroics!

Matter-of-fact was their attitude and, if we are to remember rightly those whom we left behind, we dare not forget that. That’s what makes it so difficult for me to speak to you about them: convention would bid me refer to them as conventional heroes: while all the time their ghostly voices are whispering to me to remind you of them as they were and are in their lovable simplicity.

I’ll try to obey them rather than convention, and coming to you as a ghost, a revenant [one who returns after death], I’ll draw you back again for a moment to 1915 and shew you what they were and we are, and show you also what you were and what you have become. And the first thing I’ll tell you about them is this, that in 1914/1915 the country produced something which it has produced once and I fear will never produce again, and which no other country has produced except our Commonwealth.

The nearest attempt has been made by the U.S.A. but theirs is something not quite the same. Those men who lie far away in Gallipoli abide changeless - the type of a new manhood of which alas the pattern is already broken - a volunteer army, a New Army, which was a real fighting army, a force to be reckoned with because it freely accepted discipline - a complete surprise to friend and enemy alike. “By God! Well done the Royal Scots!” This admiring tribute from their Brigadier General on 1 May 1915 illustrates what I mean. These matter of fact men brigaded with regular soldiers knew all the time that they were not regular soldiers: but if they had not the regular soldier’s experience and training they had something else and brought to the stern test of battle a moral power to ensure that the job they were given to do was “well done”. This is something we are apt just to take for granted but to shew it in its uniqueness may I ask you to contrast Edinburgh in July 1915 and Edinburgh in 1745.

Major Ewing thus describes 1915 “The frightful list of casualties sustained by the R.S. in the action of the 28th June plunged Edinburgh into mourning. There was such a slaughter of Officers that people could only think that some unforeseen accident had happened. It was not yet realized that the battalions had accomplished a feat rare in war. That hey had, without any support from artillery gained all their objectives against a resolute and gallant enemy.” Edinburgh had cause for sorrow but also for pride.

In September 1745 a force of some 1800 half armed Highlanders were threatening Edinburgh. A celebrated predecessor of mine at Inveresk then a student at Edinburgh University was one of the Volunteers enrolled and armed for the city’s defence. His account of the affair makes shameful reading [see the Autobiography of the Rev. Dr Alexander Carlyle (1722-1805) Minister of Inveresk, Wm. Blackwood and Sons 1860, pages 111 ff.] : how the principal of the University called upon the Student Company in a most pathetic speech to desert from this rash enterprise: how their gallant Capt. Drummond was prevailed upon not to allow his volunteers to go into action because he could not be answerable for exposing so many young men of condition [social position/rank] to certain danger and uncertain victory : and how at last they were marched up glad to deliver their arms to the Castle, lest those arms should have fallen into the hands of the enemy -- though not a little ashamed and afflicted at their inglorious campaign.

Only 170 years between the two Edinburghs : yet what an eternity of difference! The men we remember abide forever as a shining example of new manhood a new soldiery of which the mould is already broken and it will be difficult to cast it again.

And now you will pardon me if my aging thoughts [he is 55] go faltering stumbling back along the broken road of personal memories: I think of names now : of the men who commanded you - how varied were their characters from that of the austere reserved restrained J.T.R. to that of the fire-eating “Cabby” : and how loyally the men obeyed them all. I think of humbler folk. For you and me simple names and nicknames such as Alick and Tommy and Matthew and Jim and Lovey and Tubby still flow with a radiance borrowed from men we knew and admired nearly 40 years ago, and to each of you, I imagine, one name above all the rest has its own particular associations of comradeship. Each of us has his own secret garden where deep in the heart, sacred, holy, a single red flower is rooted for as long as life endures.

So too with many women of our generation. Many young hearts were nearly broken when the news came home. They too are aging now: but though they took up the thread of life again and perhaps got married and had children, warriors in their turn, each of them still keeps that enclosed garden in their heart. Each has her memory and her name: and in the quiet evening sitting alone does she perhaps remember the last leave the last dance and that bitter sweet last farewell when shy reverent HE touched her lips with that first unrepeated unrepeatable kiss which told her she had his first and only love. In the shadows of age, her family now in homes of their own, does she gather around her knees dreamchildren who will never grow up and never leave her?

Ghost like I have been endeavoring to bring you in touch again with young men worth remembering: that new manhood to which in God’s providence our land gave birth in time of need. Today we are one more milestone along the road which we hope will bring us quite together with them again- when God who has blest us will according to His word make all things new.