A Sad Day for Scotland

[Old Pete]

Hi All,
I do,nt post very often but I thought this might interest some of you,Today the British goverment did with a stroke of a pen that which no enemy could do in almost three hundred years they destroyed all the Scottish Infantry Regiments.They will now be just battalions in the imaginatively titled Royal Regiment of Scotland (I wonder how long it took them to come up with that) Super Regiment or as military miniatures.This is not only happening in Scotland, English and Irish Regiments are suffering tnce again our politicians show their intelligence at a time when the army is over stretched cut it back even further.You can imagine what this does to the morale of the troops in Iraq Yours Disgustedly
George :angry:

 

[Steve H]

I know how you feel mate, my old regiment has been wiped out totally now. It used to be the Duke of Edinburghs Royal Regiment (Berksire and Wiltshire) who were diluted when they amalgamated with the Gloucestershire regiment in 1995 to become the RGBW . But in the latest round of short sighted government madness they have both been swallowed up into the Light Division.

 

[IronMike]

I feel your pain. Eliminating these Regt's is nothing short of a crime. Fortunately my alma mater the USMC still maintains it's divison and regimental identifications. The oldest only go back about 90 or so years but still important to our Corps. The Marine Corps does however swap battalions with other regts so that you might find the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines (we refer to regiments by the term Marines) assigned to any other infantry regiment. As part of the 9th Marines they would still be referred to at 3/5. All that started as part of the unit rotation program 20+ years ago. Instead of sending individual replacements to the 3rd Division in Okinawa for 12 months we swapped battlions with divisions in the states for 6 month deployments. Better for unit integrety and family stability. I pray we don't ever change. Something for governments to think about-

There is nothing particulairly glorious about sweaty fellows, laden with killing tools, going along to fight. And yet-such a column reprsents a great deal more than 28,000 individuals mustered into a division. All that is behind those men is in that column, too: the old battles, long forgotten, that secured our nation- Brandywine and Trenton and Yorktown, San Jacinto and Chapultpec, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Antietam, El Caney; scores of skirmishes, far off, such as Marines have nearly every year-in which a man can be killed as dead as ever a chap was in the Argonne; traditions of things endured and things accomplished, such as regiments had down forever... John W. Thomason, Capt USMC "Fix Bayonets" Scribners 1926

 

[DaveCox]

I understand your feelings George. Politicians have no understanding of the Regimental pride and comradeship that made the British army the best in the world bar none for several hundred years.
At least they can't do this to my old mob - a gunner will always be a gunner!