Lance Coporal Colin Chisholm was captured at St Valery when attached to the 51st Highland Brigade. At 10 p.m. on 25 March a scan of the Daily Express article was posted on the Facebook page for “Yes to an Independent Scotland” (see image above). Data returned from the Piano 'meterActive/meterExpired' callback event. Historical grievances are being resurrected, exaggerated, or just invented. On 28th March they were deployed into the defensive line relieving the French 21st Division between Bailleul and Armentiéres. Either way, for military or political reasons, Churchill abandoned the Highlanders. See Gordon J. Barclay, “‘Duties in Aid of the Civil Power’: The Deployment of the Army to Glasgow, 31 January to 17 February 1919,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies (2018), 38.2, pp. It was decided that British formations would be rotated to the French Army, into positions in advance of the Maginot Line, just east of the border with Luxembourg. We should remind ourselves that even this relatively mild statement is untrue and airbrushes from history the loss of non-Scottish troops. 3. The tamer version of this kind of social media post merely states, for example, “Churchill abandoned the fighting Scots of the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division June 1940.” This not only particularises the loss of Scottish troops by ignoring the shared fate of non-Scots, but also promotes the myth of “abandonment,” and implies some sort of deliberate act of malice by Churchill. If you are dissatisfied with the response provided you can contact IPSO here, By The problem was, that the article named me and my then about-to-be-published book on the anti-invasion defences of Scotland during the Second World War as the source of this “fact.”3 The book and my research suggest no such thing: the myth was created by assigning words to people who did not say them, quoting things from one context as though they were from another, and leaving out much that undermined the story. Some 3,300 men were, however, lifted from a beach at the eastern end of the St. Valéry perimeter. Men of the Durham Light Infantry, 49th (West Riding) Division ‘advance’ past a knocked-out German Panther tank during Operation ‘Epsom’, 27 June 1944. Then again, perhaps Churchill should have heeded the professional advice of his commander in the field. Here, they would be directly facing the German Army and could gain experience in front-line conditions, for example, undertaking offensive patrolling. Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours. Join to automatically receive a subscription to BOTH. In the atmosphere of increasingly heated debate, the “fact” that in Britain’s “finest hour” Field Marshal Ironside, Churchill, Westminster, and “the English” planned to abandon the Scots to the Nazis was seized upon as a splendid stick with which to beat those campaigning to preserve the Union. The Argyll and Sutherland battalions in particular suffered heavy casualties. The Highland Division retreated over the River Bresle and re-grouped. Not only was this not an “English invasion,” the majority of War Cabinet members present at the meeting at which it was agreed to provide troops to the Sheriff, if he needed them, were themselves Scots, and the discussion took place in a room where the majority of politicians and civil servants present also were Scots. The British Expeditionary Force, they argued, was a half-hearted effort and, at the first opportunity, it had packed up and run off home. The capitulation of Singapore was another wartime humiliation, redeemed in the popular mind, by the extraordinary courage and heroism of the POWs in the face of the brutality of their Japanese captors. They would probably have held out for even longer at St. Valery had the French around them not hoisted the white flag. Whatever the reasons for the calamity at St. Valery, Fortune's Highland Division should be remembered with pride. The battle of Saint-Valery-en-Caux is being remembered by three Scots armed forces charities, and pipers are being asked to play a leading role. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. The International Churchill Society (ICS), founded in 1968 shortly after Churchill's death, is the world’s preeminent member organisation dedicated to preserving the historic legacy of Sir Winston Churchill. I have concentrated on fake history on social media, but much of the same mythologised past appears in newspaper articles, TV documentaries, and even popular and academic histories and school history texts. Gott had been killed. It's hard not to recall General Wolfe's assessment of the worth of Scottish soldiers: "No great mischief if they fall.". And rightly so. But this is only the beginning. On 12 June 1940, more than a week after the last British troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk, the 51st (Highland) Division was forced to surrender to General Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division at St Valery-en-Caux. Jock Morrison. All of the units involved from both operations were part of the 21st Army Group commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. • There were troops, tanks, and a howitzer in George Square on 31 January. The 51st was a firstline Territorial Army Division comprising nine Scottish infantry battalions and (usually ignored in the narrative of grievance) Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers, and other units, some of which were English. The soldiers of the 51st (Highland) Division paid a heavy price with more than 10,000 taken prisoner at St. Valéry. Early doubts about the division's performance earned it the nickname of "Harper's Duds" after the name of its commander, Major-General George Harper. 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