It takes a real man to wear the kilt
Feb 23 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post
But in his meticulously researched book, Dennis concentrates only on the Second World War, hence its title – Special Service of a Hazardous Nature. The Story of the Liverpool Scottish Involvement in Special Services (1939-1945).
In 1920, the Liverpool Scottish was reformed as the 10th (Liverpool Scottish) Battalion. The King’s Regiment (Liverpool) TA, but 17 years later was redesignated as the Liverpool Scottish, the Queen’s Own Cameroon Highlanders, to become an integral Territorial battalion of the Cameron Highlanders. A second battalion was formed immediately before the war.
As commandos, many would serve with great distinction.
Secret operations suited the free spirit of the Liverpool Scottish, who did not bow easily to “bull” from the top brass, though more colourful expressions were heard in the barracks – even from tongues and lips more accustomed to prayers.
It is unfair to name just one engagement, but the part played by the Liverpool Scottish in the raid on Saint-Nazaire in occupied France (Operation Chariot) on March 28, 1942, is commemorated in the annals of war.
Members of the Liverpool Scottish and other men had been trained as commandos in Scotland and 611 were chosen for Operation Chariot. The audacious plan was for the former US destroyer, HMS Campbeltown, packed with explosives on delayed fuses, to ram the gates of the U-boat base, while the commandos rushed ashore from motor launches. Immense damage was done, and the objective of preventing the port being used by the German battleship Tirpitz was realised.
Five VCs were awarded, but the price had been high, with 168 soldiers and sailors killed. Among the Liverpool Scottish contingent was Captain Donald Roy (“The Laird”). His DSO citation read: “Captain Roy led his part ashore across the blazing bows of the destroyer under intense enemy fire. His tasks included the destruction of two enemy medium anti-aircraft gun emplacements on top of the pumping-station. With the utmost daring and rapidity, Captain Roy and his party scaled the walls of the pumping-station with ladders and grappling-hooks, silenced the guns and annihilated the crews.”
Shamefully, the Germans photographed Tom McCormack of the Liverpool Scottish, as he sat in the street dying. He had been shot several times and a grenade had mutilated his face. This was published in the German Armed Forces’ magazine, Signal, under the headline, “Picture of A British Commando”.
Dennis looks again at that photograph – another time, another place, but always there are brave men, who die for others.
His own life had been different, but the two men are united by the Forbes tartan. In a sense Dennis is the keeper of Tom’s memory.
After leaving Caldy Grange Grammar School, Wirral, with O levels in Art and Science, Dennis, 65, the son of a margarine factory worker, was for 30 years an engineer at Cammell Laird Shipbuilders, Birkenhead.
He is married to Maisie. Dennis joined the Liverpool Scottish as a TA soldier in 1962.
“The Cold War was at its height,” he recalls. “I was working in the shipyard and thought that if I was called up I would be put in the Navy. Well, I liked building ships, but not sailing in them, so I looked round for the nearest TA unit – the Cheshires, didn’t like them. The Royal Marines had big hats, didn’t like them. Someone suggested the Liverpool Scottish, so I suddenly found a Scottish grandmother and did 16 years with them.”
Such was the glamour of the battalion that in more recent times, Merseysiders often “discovered” Scottish ancestry to enable them to join. Questions weren’t asked. “As long as you were willing to wear a kilt,” Dennis adds. “But getting an Englishman to wear a kilt is very difficult. For the first week you feel, ooh very embarrassed, but you soon get into it.
“In the end I was doing the job of museum curator and the two things clashed.”
On Tuesday evenings, Sergeant Reeves would be drilling when someone would knock asking to see the museum, founded in a very small way at the Fraser St HQ in 1956. It is now in Wavertree.
As a TA soldier, Dennis was occasionally sent to camps overseas and he was in Cyprus in 1974, when Greece invaded. “But they were evacuated by the British Army. They drove us to the main British base in closed trucks. We saw the mass graves being dug. They got us out as quickly as they could,” he says.
Well, what has become of the Liverpool Scottish? “We have been reduced by Army cuts to a platoon, which is about 30 men, serving with A Company of the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. Some are out in Afghanistan and some are in Iraq as I speak,” he says.
So the tradition continues and Dennis is keeper of the memory.
* THE museum is open on Wednesday afternoons and those wishing to visit should contact Dennis on 0151 645 5717. Copies of the book are available there or 15 Rydal Bank, Lower Bebington, Wirral. CH63 7LL (£12.50 p&p).
