He was proud
and glad to wear the kilt, and to lead men who did the same. While he
was in training at Bedford he organized a corps of cyclists for
dispatch-bearing work. He was a crack cyclist himself, and it was a
sport of which he was passionately fond. So he took a great interest
in the corps, and it soon gained wide fame for its efficiency. So
true was that that the authorities took note of the corps, and of
John, who was responsible for it, and he was asked to go to France to
take charge of organizing a similar corps behind the front. But that
would have involved a transfer to a different branch of the army, and
detachment from his regiment. And--it would have meant that he must
doff his kilt. Since he had the chance to decline--it was an offer,
not an order, that had come to him--he did, that he might keep his
kilt and stay with his own men.
To my eyes there is no spectacle that begins to be so imposing as the
sight of a parade of Scottish troops in full uniform. And it is the
unanimous testimony of German prisoners that this war has brought
them no more terrifying sight than the charge of a kilted regiment.
The Highlanders come leaping forward, their bayonets gleaming,
shouting old battle cries that rang through the glens years and
centuries ago, and that have come down to the descendants of the
warriors of an ancient time. The Highlanders love to use cold steel;
the claymore was their old weapon, and the bayonet is its nearest
equivalent in modern war.
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