The Scottish Soldier and Scotland, 1914–1918

This chapter addresses Scottish military service during the First World War, showing how from having underperformed before the war, Scotland overperformed during the war’s first two years. Particularly striking was how many recruits came from agricultural backgrounds, although in absolute terms the big cities still contributed more men. As the Territorial Army (TA) was the principal Scottish route into the army, the battle of Loos in October 1915 had an enormous local impact: this was Scotland’s equivalent of the Somme. Every Scottish infantry regiment was represented, and both the 9th and 15th Scottish Divisions were TA Lowland Divisions. From Loos came the literary representation of the war, especially Ian Hay’s The First Hundred Thousand and John Buchan’s war poetry. The effect of the First World War, with Scottish infantry regiments raising twenty-plus battalions, was to disseminate those regimental identities much more widely across Scottish society. An enhanced Scottish identity was created, and it emerged in a military context. Overwhelmingly this identity was set within the context of the Union and the empire.