The Scottish War Memorials Project

wullmackie · Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 15 Location: Lanarkshire

Do you have a family connection with Lanarkshire Yeomanry ?

Are you interested in Military History with a local connection?

If so, you are invited to a talk by Campbell Thomson of the Lanarkshire Yeomanry Group.

At the Stonehouse Heritage Group, 4/5 The Cross Stonehouse,
2nd November 2009 at 7.30 pm.

Please bring along any memorabilia,personal stories,or questions relating to this historic regiment.

All the best
Wull

Adam Brown · Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 7:44 am Post subject:

Wull

I had never heard of the Lanarkshire Yeomanry Memorial Group before so looked them up and found this intresting article in the Lanark Gazette

http://www.lanarkgazette.co.uk/news/Legends-live-on.4420025.jp

Legends live on

Date: 22 August 2008
By Ron Harris

WHEN it comes to Clydesdale's proud military history, it's sad but true to say that the Lanarkshire Yeomanry is our 'Forgotten Regiment'.

The Cameronians, the area's regular amy unit, monopolised much of the
attention this year as it commemorated the 40th anniversary of its disbandment.

However, its Territorial — but no less glorious — sister regiment is now quite rightly claiming back some of the limelight with a
special Lanarkshire Yeomanry Memorial Group being formed to ensure that the Forgotten Regiment is remembered again.

One of the Group's first ventures is a special display at Lanark and Wishaw Libraries, showing Yeomanry memorabillia and some of the books written by veterans.

Most concentrate on the most harrowing period of its history when hundreds of men were subjected to the savage brutality of Japanese captivity in World War Two.

Group spokesman Campbell Thomson, points out that, had the Yeomanry stuck to the role for which it was first formed, it would have been nowhere near the Far East fighting during its history.

Indeed, it would never have even left the county of Lanarkshire!

After the Napoleonic Wars, the British Industrial Revolution brought its own conflicts far nearer to home than the battlefields of Corunna and Waterloo.

Lanarkshire was one of the first parts of the nation to be heavily industrialised and, as the 19th century progressed, the people who worked in it started to rebel against the near slave labour conditions they worked under.

Civil unrest was everywhere and a regiment of volunteer part-time cavalry was formed to keep the peace.

So at its formation in 1820, the Lanarkshire Yeomanry was virtually the county's first police force — the Lanarkshire Constabulary not being formed until some decades later!

That all changed when the government faced a series of embarrassing reverses at the start of the Boer War at the very end of the 19th Century; the Victorian regular British Army was always tiny and was spread thinly throughout a vast, worldwide Empire.

There was, then, a desperate shortage of manpower in South Africa to fight the Boers and so the government did what was almost unthinkable at the time and turned to a local Yeomanry regiment, meant exclusively for home service, and said: "Help us!"

They had every right to refuse to serve abroad, so the Lanarkshire Yeomanry had to be asked to volunteer to serve in a war thousands of miles away from their county and country — and hundreds of them rallied to the call!

The next milestone came in 1908 when the Territiorial Army was formed, absorbing local volunteer units like the Yeomanry.

It was in this new guise as a Terrie regiment that the Lanarkshire Yeomanry entered World War One where its exploits in the Middle East and Gallipoli, fighting often as 'dismounted cavalry', became part of military legend.

On the Western Front, units like the 12th Battalion (Ayr and Lanark Yeomanry) Royal Scots Fusiliers, a wartime hybrid unit, showed great gallantry in the trenches, one Carluke member, Sergeant Thomas Caldwell becoming one of the town's legendary Three VC's.

If the Yeomanry were the Forgotten Regiment, Tom Caldwell was, perhaps, Carluke's Forgotten VC.

His award was rather overshadowed by that of fellow Carlukian William Angus who won his medal early in the war when few VC's had been handed out — so newspapers lavished atttention on him.

Sergeant Caldwell's VC came at the other end of the war, single-handedly charging a German machine-gun nest, lobbing grenades and, alone, capturing 18 of the enemy in what many would have regarded a suicide attack.

Acts of bravery like that are hugely impressive but, perhaps, far less spectacular courage shown by Caldwell's successors in World War Two is every bit as admirable.

That was the courage to endure years of hellish captivity by the Japanese as the entire 155th (Lanarkshire Yeomanry) Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery became POW's.

Meanwhile, sister unit the 156th showed distinction in battles in Sicily, Italy and, ultimately, into the heart of Germany.

These and many other acts of sacrifice and valour are commemorated at the displays at Lanark and Wishaw Library which opened on Friday, August 15, the anniversary of Victory in Japan Day.

Group member Robert Johnston, who lost both his brother and uncle in service with the regiment in the Far East, said: "The displays are a small way of marking the sacrifice made by young men from this area.
Many were barely out of their teens."

The displays are free to visit during normal libary opening hours.
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Scottish Monuments & Memorials