Enlisting in the Scots Guards

[rolt968]

Two brothers enlisted at the Brechin "feeing merkat" (hiring fair) in late November 1914. One joined the Black Watch the other the Scots Guards.

Can anyone answer a few questions about how and indeed why one but not the other joined the Scots Guards please?

Did the recruiting officer/ sergeant say something like "You look a likely lad you could get into the Guards" to one but not the other?

Would a recruiting sergeant receive some kind of bonus for a Guards recruit?

Could there have been a Scots Guards recruiting party as well as a Black Watch party?

Did the new Guardsman's enlistment count from when he actually reached the Guards (Depot?)?

RM

[Coldstreamer]

Height maybe, needed to be tall for the guards

[rolt968]

Height maybe, needed to be tall for the guards

Thanks, I had wondered about that. He was a gamekeeper in civilian life.

However I'd better try to clarify my question:

He was at the fair in Brechin volunteering. The Scots Guards depot was in/ near London. He probably had never been very far from home.

Did the recruiters say "You are a tall lad, there are vacancies in the Scots Guards, sign here"?

Or did they say "sign here, we'll send you off to the Scots Guards depot and if they like you fine, otherwise you can join....."?

If there was no Scots Guards recruiting party was there some advantage to the recruiters in recruiting a Guardsman?

(I'm partly curious because there is a discrepancy of 8 to 10 days between the date of the fair and his enlistment date in the Scots Guards (unfortunately I only have this from the SWB register so it could be inaccurate).

RM

[ss002d6252]

It depends - sometimes they would tell you that only a certain regiment needed men, other times they could ask a man where he wanted to go and try to accommodate it. It may even have been the recruiting serjeant's former regiment and he was pushing that as the way to go.

Craig