FIGHTING ON THREE FRONTS A Black Watch Battalion in the Great War

The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, a Scottish cavalry regiment, endured catastrophic losses during the Gallipoli campaign, where nearly three-quarters of its strength were lost to combat and disease, and the unit remained among the last to be evacuated from the peninsula. Reduced to a fraction of its original establishment, the survivors were amalgamated into the 4th Battalion, The Black Watch. In this reconstituted form they served in Egypt and Palestine, before being redeployed to the Western Front in 1918 in response to the German Spring Offensives. Once again, the battalion was committed to intense fighting and suffered severe casualties in the closing phases of the war. This study is grounded primarily in the wartime diaries of Major D. D. Ogilvie, an officer of the battalion, which provide a detailed and authoritative perspective on the regiment’s experience across multiple theatres of the First World War.