Jocks in the Jungle

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JOCKS IN THE JUNGLE The Second Battalion of the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment, The Black Watch and the First Battalion of the 26th Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) as Chindits

by

Gordon Thorburn

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Contents

Foreword Author’s Notes Dedication Acknowledgements

vi viii x xii

1

Religious Freedom and Watching the Highlands

1

2

The Road to India

7

3

Why They Were There

34

4

Never seen anything like it

59

5

Orders to proceed

80

6

The Beginning of the End

120

7

Monsoon

138

8

The Last Few

168

9

Post Mortem

190

Sources

205

Index

206

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Foreword

Families spend holidays where the rivers flow in Madhya Pradesh, north-central India. They have elephant rides and jungle drives, hoping to see a tiger.

In 1943, there was no thought of such good times for two battalions of Scottish soldiers. For them, that country meant a new and unimaginably arduous kind of training.

Some of the Black Watch boys had seen action in Somaliland, Crete and Tobruk. Some of the Cameronians had fought the Japs in the Burma retreat. Even for these, such training was trial by ordeal. Many more of the Jocks were new, just shipped out from Scotland, but all of them were ordinary men; men from the towns and villages who’d taken the King’s shilling in their country’s peril.

These were first-class British infantry, but not the superselected Special Forces types that we know today.

Nevertheless, it was a special-forces job they were supposed to do and that is what they were called, Special Force.

The challenge in Madhya Pradesh was to turn themselves into jungle fighters as good as the Japanese. They had a few short months to become Chindits.

They joined two brigades of 7,677 officers and men going into the jungle, of whom 531 were killed, captured or missing, and around 1,600 were wounded. By the end, some 3,800 were too sick to fight. Only 1,754 could be classified as ‘effecvi

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Foreword

tive’ when they came out and, in truth, half of those were fit for no more than a hospital bed. It was a miracle anybody survived at all.

And that was just two of the five brigades that went in. Was this the greatest medical disaster of World War Two? Who caused it?

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Chapter One

Religious Freedom and Watching the Highlands

All famous regiments of the line can list great battles and brave deeds, but few can claim such unorthodox births as the Cameronians and the Black Watch. Both began with fierce loyalty to the Crown, but with a unique second reason for being.

The origins of the Cameronians are in the Scottish religious struggles of the (mainly) seventeenth century, and in the Presbyterian faith as practised in south west Scotland. The regiment arose out of the Covenanters, those who had signed or agreed with the three Covenants, which were also signed by the several kings, and which demanded freedom of worship and freedom from bishops. Charles II, although a signatory, declared the Covenants void and imposed bishops on the Scots, ejecting the local ministers if they would not submit. Covenanters followed their ministers who held services wherever they could, with armed guards to prevent interference from government forces.

Persecution was severe; its natural consequence, rebellion.

Armed uprisings included one led by a most radical Covenanter called Richard Cameron. His death in battle at Airds Moss made him a folk hero and a particularly strict element of the Presbyterians began to call themselves Cameronians.

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When the Catholic King James II of England and VII of Scotland was kicked out, to be replaced by the firmly Protestant William of Orange, one of the many results was the establishment of non-episcopal Presbyterianism as the official religion of Scotland. The formation of a Puritan regiment of foot swiftly followed in 1689, mustering beside the Douglas Water in Lanarkshire, and named the Cameronians for the Covenanter martyr, and professing certain religious leanings, with the young James Douglas, fourteenth Earl of Angus, as Colonel.

Every man had a bible, went to the kirk armed, and swore allegiance to the king, ‘in defence of the nation’ and ‘in opposition to Popery’.

Earlier in that same year, John Graham, Viscount of Dundee (Bonny Dundee) had raised an army to fight the Stewart cause. He defeated loyalist forces at Killiekrankie, himself being slain just as victory was his. Without him as leader, the Jacobites moved on Dunkeld but failed to take it, even though it was a town without natural defensive assets, and the garrison – the Cameronian Regiment – was small. Well organised, the novitiates thus won their first action, withstanding the shock of the highland charge and gradually wearing down the Jacobites with disciplined firing.

The rebels retreated to the north and that was the end of the Jacobite threat for the moment. The Cameronians were soon posted abroad, to the Low Countries to oppose the French in the Nine Years War, and on to great honours in all the major wars thereafter.

Having had the same monarchs for a century, the Scottish parliament voted for complete union with England in 1707 – largely for economic reasons – during the reign of Queen Anne. When she died in 1714, her successor was the 2

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Hanoverian George I, who couldn’t speak English and hardly knew where Scotland was.

The Earl of Mar, without bothering to check first with the exiled James Stuart (the Old Pretender, son of James II), raised another Jacobite banner in 1715. As with Bonny Dundee’s efforts, the rebellion might well have succeeded had it been better organised and directed after initial success, but it rather fizzled out at the battle of Sheriffmuir, fought between Mar’s highlanders and the Duke of Argyle’s loyalist army. Mar had much greater numbers but little experience as a military commander. Argyle had the professional soldiers, and the result was a fairly chaotic draw. For a description, we need go no further than the poetry of William McGonagall: ’Twas in the year 1715, and on the 10th of November, Which the people of Scotland have cause to remember; On that day the Earl of Mar left Perth bound for Sheriffmuir, At the same time leaving behind a garrison under Colonel Balfour.

Besides leaving a force of about three thousand men quartered in different parts of Fife, To protect the people’s property, and quell party strife, The army along with him amounted to three thousand foot and twelve hundred cavalry, (actually six thousand and eight hundred respectively) All in the best of order, a most pleasant sight to see.

(To cut a long story short – The battle swayed to and fro, With the poet giving us lots of information, in line after line of piffle, that we don’t need to know.)

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Jocks in the Jungle Then the Highlanders chased them and poured in a volley, Besides they hewed them down with their broadswords mercilessly; But somehow both armies got mixed together, and a general rout ensued, While the Highlanders eagerly the English (actually Scottish) army hotly pursued.

The success on either side is doubtful to this day, And all that can be said is, both armies ran away; And on whichsoever side success lay it was toward the Government, And to allay all doubts about which party won, we must feel content.

By no means all the highland clans were Jacobite inclined.

For example, the Campbells, Grants, Frasers and Munros were loyal to the crown and, when the dust had had time to settle after Sheriffmuir, from among these families six companies of militia were formed, three of Campbells and one each of the others. They were really a kind of armed police, placed in small units at key points across the highlands, there to keep the peace between the clans, maintain order and, as far as was possible, enforce the laws of parliament which prohibited men from carrying weapons.

Although run on clan lines, they did have a uniform of sorts, plaids in sombre colours which from a distance looked almost black, and which had nothing in common with the red coats of the king’s regulars. Their job was to watch for trouble and so they acquired a nickname, the ‘Black Watchers’.

Sheltering in France, the Stuarts remained a threat and a focal point for unrest. Perhaps with this in mind, the six companies, plus another four, were amalgamated and formalised into a regiment of the army, with the restriction 4

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that all recruits were to be Scots, ‘and none other to be taken’.

George II’s decree for this to happen was given in 1739. The regiment held its initial parade at the River Tay, near Aberfeldy, the following year, under the command of Colonel John Lindsay, twentieth Earl of Crawford. They now wore the red coat for the first time, with red waistcoat too, and a blue bonnet, above twelve yards of blue, green and red plaid wound about and held by an ox-leather belt four inches wide.

They carried a musket, bayonet and broadsword, with a small shield and a choice of a pistol or dirk. Probably noting that you only had one shot with a pistol but could do more mischief quickly with the dagger, that’s what most of them chose.

The Scots-only recruitment policy was interpreted by many of the men as Scotland-only in terms of duty, so when the regiment marched to London for a royal inspection, which didn’t happen, and the rumour went about that they were for a West Indies posting, at least a hundred of them decided to go home.

They were caught in Northamptonshire and, after courts martial, three of the ringleaders were shot.

Their role as a regular army regiment having been thus fully explained, several more things had to occur before they could become the Black Watch of legend. They had their first battle – against the French at Fontenoy in 1745 – and soon after that were allocated the 42nd rank of seniority in the British army and thus became, in Scots, the Gallant Forty-Twa. The red hackle became part of the Black Watch uniform in 1795, and so the Forty Twa had all its identity and was ready to march into glorious history.

In 1779, another battalion was raised which shortly became the 73rd Regiment, which rejoined the 42nd in the reorganisation of 1881 as the Second Battalion of The Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment.

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In 1794, a regiment of Perthshire Volunteers was raised to fight revolutionary France, which later became the Perthshire Light Infantry and 90th in seniority. In 1881 the Perthshires became the Second Battalion of the much older Cameronians, the 26th Regiment, and together were named The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles).

These numbers – 42, 73, 26 and 90 – were to prove significant in 1944.

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