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The British Council has just announced the results of a poll as part of their report Remember the World as well as the War. Not surprisingly, the findings showed that fewer than half of UK residents knew, despite the clue in the word 'world', that the First World War was fought in other theatres away from the Western Front. I say not surprisingly, because in Scotland the executive agency of the Scottish Government – Education Scotland - whose remit is the provision of support and resources for learning and teaching, has decided that their webpages dedicated to the impact of the Great War to Scotland focuses only on Scotland’s contribution to the Western Front and the home front.
An example of the content is a PowerPoint file listing the Scottish Divisions of the First World War. A welcome addition to any educational website you would hope. The problem with this file is that it only lists three out of the four front-line Scottish Divisions which fought in the First World War – the 9th (Scottish), 15th (Scottish) and 51st (Highland) Divisions. There is no mention of the 52nd (Lowland) Division! No mention of the thousands of Territorial soldiers from south of the Forth and Clyde serving in the Royal Scots, Royal Scots Fusiliers, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Scottish Rifles, Highland Light Infantry and the kilted men of Renfrewshire serving in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
The Education Scotland web pages specifically look at three battles which involved the 9th, 15th and 51st Divisions but did not include the 52nd Division. The fact that the Lowlanders spent most of the war in the Middle-East and not the Western Front should not excuse their absence for a document which purports to be a list of 'The Scottish Divisions of the First World War'.
Scotland’s bloodiest battle of the First World War was Loos. The eager young Scots who rushed to the colours in the autumn of 1914 to join the New Army 9th and 15th Divisions were cut down in their thousands on 25 September 1915. What the Education Scotland website doesn’t mention is that since June 1915 the first units of the 52nd (Lowland) Division had been in Gallipoli. On 12 July 1915 the two Territorial battalions of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, which recruited throughout the border counties of Scotland, suffered horrendous casualties. When Education Scotland describes how the whole of Scotland suffered after Loos, it neglects to mention the Border counties (particularly those which now make up the Scottish Borders Council area) had already been through that grief two months before, after the attack on Achi Baba Nullah had cost the two KOSB Territorial battalions nearly 400 dead.
The 52nd Division doesn’t deserve to be left out of Education Scotland’s web content. Gallipoli should not be left to the Antipodeans to remember; there were thousands of Scots there too, in the Lowland Division and in the Lowland and Highland Mounted Brigades.
After Gallipoli the 52nd (Lowland) Division moved to Egypt and served in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force; defending the Suez Canal and then advancing into Palestine. In December 1917 three brigades of the Division did such a good job of capturing Turkish positions around Jaffa that they were commemorated by stone memorials at the locations where they each crossed the River Auja.
By the spring of 1918 the Lowlanders had been in the Middle East for three years but their presence was required on the Western Front for the final battles of the First World War. Here then is the opportunity for Education Scotland to include the 52nd Division in their PowerPoint – the Lowland Division was moved to France, fighting along with the three other Scottish Divisions. Unfortunately this opportunity has been ignored by Education Scotland. After Loos, Somme and Arras, where the Scottish divisions on the Western Front suffered heavy casualties for little gain, there is no place for the victories of 1918 in the List of Key Battles. The year 1918 does get a brief mention on page 6 in another Education Scotland download but once again it focuses on early battles where Scottish divisions took heavy casualties. The victories of the British Army in the final 100 days, which the Lowland Division, and the three other Scottish Divisions all took part in, doesn’t fit with the idea of the Scottish soldier as victim and not victor; so the 52nd are still ignored.
The First World War is a mammoth topic to cover in just a few web pages, so some content will have to be left out; but the omission of the 52nd (Lowland) Division from the Education Scotland website is a disgraceful slight by a government department on the South of Scotland. The latest poll shows the general public currently have a blinkered view of the First World War – focused on France and Flanders, so it is vitally important that those tasked with educating Scotland’s youth about their history do not ignore those who didn’t go over the top to their deaths at Loos, Somme or Arras.
By @ScotlandsGW100 – a Twitter account set up to monitor and publicise the First World War Centenary Commemoration activities in Scotland. It is not affiliated to any organisation and is not a supporter of the Scottish Government’s laissez-faire attitude to the centenary.