Novel tribute to Highland heroes Published on Sunday 26 February 2012 00:45 THEY were Scotland's "Saturday night soldiers," who distinguished themselves in some of the most brutal battles of the First World War, only to be disbanded in 1916 as a depleted battalion of just 200 men. About 960 territorial soldiers from the Highlands and Islands formed the Cameron Highlanders, a company that was thrown into the carnage of the trenches in 1915 to bolster other regiments hit hard by the relentless shelling and gunfire. About half of the 4th Battalion were native Gaelic speakers and most were from remote villages or crofts. They were nicknamed the "Saturday night soldiers" because they travelled from across the Highlands to train on Saturdays. Now the story of the defunct battalion has been told in a book, Steel And Tartan, which its author Patrick Watt hopes will fill a "glaring hole" in people's understanding of the role of Scottish soldiers in the First World War. The Cameron Highlanders arrived in France at the height of the trench warfare. In the battles of 1915, the Highlanders went "over the top" five times. In the Battle of Festubert, described by one survivor as "pure hell let loose," a quarter of the men of a single battalion of the Highlanders were killed or wounded. The dead included two pairs of brothers killed on the same day. Watt, who grew up in Nairn and worked at the National Archives in Edinburgh, has drawn on unpublished diaries and letters as well as newspaper reports for his book. The men of the Cameron Highlanders, recruited from Skye, Raasay, Inverness, Nairn, Beauly, Strathspey, Lochaber and Fort William, were a close-knit group. Unlike many British regiments, their officers were not drawn from the aristocracy - they were generally professional men. "There's a big glaring hole in an understanding of what went on with these Scotsmen in World War One," said Watt. Scotland lost more dead and wounded by head of population than anywhere else in the UK. It sheds light on the Scottish experience of World War One, and the resilience of the Territorial Force soldiers. They had never been away from their home parishes, some of them had never been on trains. They were gamekeepers and probably poachers. The vast majority were a good shot because they were still living a rural existence. They didn't know how these men were going to stand up to the rigours of battle, and in the end they stood up very well indeed. Records show that 930 men of the 4th Cameron Highlanders went to France in February 1915, with 30 officers. By the end of the year, only three or four of those officers were left in the field. The book draws on the letters of brothers Ian and William Mackay, sons of an Inverness solicitor who were both law graduates from Edinburgh University. Ian Mackay at first joked about the men's efforts to speak French. "Most of them say "oui oui" to everything and the Skyemen usually stare and say nothing." Dining behind the lines, he described how they got their Pipe Major to compose a march called The 4th Camerons At Neuve Chapelle. The officers danced a reel and "the French people in the hotel were rather astonished at the proceedings." But at the Battle of Festubert, after German machine guns had stopped a force of regular soldiers, the 4th Camerons did a full Highland charge through 1,000 yards of fields intersected by ditches and canals to take part of a German trench. They retreated after seven or eight hours, over ground swept by fire, swimming back down canals. "It was pure hell let loose," one battalion bomb-thrower wrote to the Highland News. Shrapnel bursting above our heads, shells dropping alongside of you, and German machine guns and snipers picking off the men by scores. It was a pitiable sight to see some of the boys coming down the road without kilts, jackets, haversacks, and drenched to the skin. Anyone who came out of it alive should be thankful. In the same battle, Private Hector MacDonald, from Daviot, near Inverness, described seeing blades of grass jumping in the air from German machine gun fire before he left his trench. Three men who went ahead of him were shot down, and as he ran he was hit simultaneously by three bullets, each hitting buckles or pouches, and one causing his ammunition pouch to explode, setting him on fire. The Cameron Highlanders were disbanded in 1916 as an under-strength battalion with no prospect of reinforcement, despite a plea from the Inverness Burghs MP Annan Bryce for a battalion that had won "deathless renown on the Fields of Flanders." Steel And Tartan by Patrick Watt is published by The History Press in April