Scots Guards
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Battalions |
1st Battalion Scots Guards, an Armoured Infantry Battalion, forms the backbone of a Mechanized Brigade. Armoured Infantry is at times a very challenging role. The main role in conventional warfare is to strike deep into enemy positions using the speed, protection and firepower of our vehicles. In the past year our vehicles have seen action in Afghanistan. The Battalion is stationed in Catterick, North Yorkshire and is employed in the Armoured Infantry Role. The Battalion will remain in Catterick for the foreseeable future maintaining its armoured role. The Battalion holds 5 companies as well as supporting arms. Life in the Battalion is varied and challenging, one day driving across the Polish plains in a Warrior Armoured Vehicle, and the next packing kit to go on a training exercise in Northern Australia.
F Company is a sub unit of the Scots Guards, formed from the 2nd Battalion, which was placed into suspended animation after the Defence cuts in 1993. F Company has served in London since 1993. Their role is to provide Royal Guards to Buckingham Palace, St James's Palace, The Tower of London and Windsor Castle. Public duties are the 'bread and butter' of the company but it's also expected to carry out operational duties anywhere in the world. Guardsman can expect to be posted to F Company after training. The Company also participates in the annual Trooping of the Colour. However, it should be noted that F Company is an Infantry Company and between public duties deploys on training exercises in the UK and overseas. The Company, has previously deployed to Poland, Kazakhstan, Belize and Spain.
Who more brave, more reckless of danger, more in love with heroic deeds than the hardy mountaineers of Scotland? — the 'children of the mist and the fell,' — bred among the rugged crags and the deep defiles, and accustomed from infancy to dare, and struggle, and endure? They have all the passion and impetuosity of the Celt, with which, discipline and association combine the solidity and inflexible courage of the Saxon. Their loyalty is romantic; their patriotism unconquerable. A thousand glorious memories of the historic past — such as might fire the blood of the dullest and most phlegmatic — warm their impassioned natures to a pitch of poetical enthusiasm, and they leap into the press of the battle with a joyous ardour which will brook no defeat, and binds to their standards the willing victory. They give to their officers the devotion which of old they yielded to their chiefs; and the spirit and traditions of clanship, still powerful among them, inspire them with the feelings of a noble brotherhood. Shoulder to shoulder they advance to the charge; shoulder to shoulder they oppose the onset of the enemy; shoulder to shoulder they face the crashing shot and levelled steel; and shoulder to shoulder they die where they stand; overpowered, perhaps, but not defeated; broken, but not subdued! The love of battle seems innate in the hardy Highlander.
The earliest regiment of Foot Guards was the 'King's Eoyal Regiment of Foot Life Guards, raised in 1642, shortly before the opening battle of Edgehill, after which their first colonel succeeded his father, who had received a mortal wound, as second Earl of Lindsey. Charles the Second was not slow to follow the example of his unfortunate father; perhaps it was the haunting memory of that last sad scene at Whitehall which prompted him to surround himself with Household Troops, both Horse and Foot. In 1650 he appointed Lord Lorn's Scotch Regiment to be the Scots Guards, shortly before the battle of Dunbar. But the routs of Naseby and Worcester proved fatal to the existence of these two regiments in 1645 and 1651 respectively. In 1662, the King found time to turn his attention to the two distant kingdoms: in April the Irish Guards were formed, and in August the reconstitution of the Scots Guards commenced. A regiment of foot guards consisting of five companies was formed in 1662, and commanded first by the Earl of Linlithgow, and afterwards, in 1684, by James Douglas, second son of the second Earl of Queensberry, who was killed at Namur in 1691. In time (1678) it became the Scots Guards. It had various names (1662–86) and was finally called the Scotch Guards (or Scots Guards) (1686). The subsequent name changes were: 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards (1712); the Scots Fusilier Guards (1831); and the Scots Guards (1877).
Some confusion has perhaps arisen from both the Scots Guards and Royal Scots or Lothian Regiment regiments being commanded by a Douglas at the same time. In 1831 it was known as the "Scots Fusilier Guards" and since 1877 as the "Scots Guards.
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