5th Battalion Cameronians

[Ed ROBINSON]

Hello Chums, an online ebook on the 5th Battalion

http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview/?pi=nla.gen-vn5814280-s1-v

Cheers ED

[WilliamRev]

Thanks for posting that Ed. I have a copy of the original, but you have to pay £100 plus for a copy (if you can find one!) these days, and it is a battalion that often gets mentioned on the forum. During the war it usually called itself the 5th Scottish Rifles (rather than 5th Cameronians), because it was in the same brigade (the 19th) as 1st Battalion Cameronians, and helped to distinguish them.

William

[Ed ROBINSON]

Hello William, I have copied the entire book page by page but Im not sure how it would go with copy-rite to post it on the forum.

It is a well written history easy to read. I have just started to read it in relation to my research.

Its a funny thing, I am on Long Service leave and re visiting the research that I have done on my medal collection. The online diary s and the medal rolls are opening up some new leads. I have a broad WW1 collection based on medals to Scottish units. Its certainly starting to to come up with some funny quirks. I have picked up groups to units years apart, in some cases over 20 years only to find that they were part of the same e enforcement draft. I have 8 medal groups to the Camerionians. Pte THOMSON 7503 who was 5th SR, Sjt J.WALKER 3091, 5th RS then attached to 5th SR and two other groups who were 6th SR then became 5/6th SR. Funny how 1/2 of my Cameronian collection is related to the 5th!

Cheers Ed

[WilliamRev]

Hello Ed

The link that you have posted is just fine on its' own; anyone who wants to see the book can do so from that - there is no need for you to post anything else.

The (Territorial) 5th Scottish Rifles was an interesting battalion; someone rather unkindly called it "the Glasgow middle-classes playing at soldiers", but there are loads of references (such as in The War the Infantry Knew by J.C.Dunn - one of the two or three very best books about WW1 in my opinion) to 5th SR being a very good battalion indeed: very disciplined, and keen to prove that a Territorial battalion could be the equal of a Regular one.

My grandfather was an NCO in the Officer Training Corps of Glasgow University, which provided most of the battalion's early drafts, and signed up in autumn 1914, going out to France as a Rifleman/Private in March 1915. He was with the battalion until Late November 1915, when he left to train as an officer - 5th SR provided simply loads of men to be trained as officers for other battalions (mostly lowland Scottish). I was fascinated to find that the battalion's Drill Hall/H.Q. in West Princes Street was a hundred yards down the road from where my grandfather was brought up. (There is a photo of the Drill Hall and H.Q. Here).

William