IN March 1990 a Chelsea Pensioner, Jeremiah Boyle returned to his native Glasgow to watch a plaque being unveiled at the site of the former Maryhill Barracks.
The visit brought back many memories for the 78-year-old, a former company sergeant-major, for it was at the barracks that he had joined the Highland Light Infantry (the HLI) in June 1929. He left the army in 1936 but, as a reservist, he was called up the following year to train militiamen.
He was recalled again, on September 2, 1939, the day before war was declared. During the war he saw service in France and Germany. He remained with the HLI until 1942, when he was transferred to the Gordon Highlanders, from which he was demobilised at the end of the war.
The plaque in honour of the barracks was jointly unveiled by councillor Malcolm Waugh, chairman of Strathclyde Region’s highways and transportation committee, and Lt Col (rtd) J.M.R.Fleming, regimental secretary of the Royal Highland Fusiliers.
The barracks was built in 1877, quarried from local stone, and during its long life it was home to many Scottish regiments and other military units.
The book, Glasgow in 1901, by ‘James Hamilton Muir’ (in reality, Muirhead Bone, James Bone and Archibald Charteris) argued that the city’s leisured class consisted at that time only of the 29 infantry officers stationed at the barracks.
“And this”, they wrote, “is why the military man, whom, of a summer afternoon, you recognise by his flannels, his straw hat, and his fox-terrier, has an air so wearied and listless. With the other leisured men in the town he may have dined every night since the regiment came to Maryhill; now, on this pleasant day, he is just a little tired of them and would almost give his dog to any new person of the class who could help him to air it. Think of it! Alone of 750,000 people, he of the straw hat and flannels has no ‘job’.”
The plaque relates that the depot of the HLI, later to become the City of Glasgow regiment, moved from Hamilton to Maryhill in March 1921. The last HLI soldiers to be trained there left in September 1958. On January 21, 1959 the HLI amalgamated with the Royal Scots Fusiliers to become the Royal Highland Fusiliers (Princess Margaret’s Own Glasgow and Ayrshire Regiment).
The other image here, taken in August 1957, shows Major-General R.E. Urquhart, Colonel of the HLI, having a word with a recruit at the passing-out parade at the barracks. The barracks was demolished in 1961.
Speaking in 1990, Jeremiah Boyle learned that the wall to which the plaque was attached had been taken down, stone by stone, and rebuilt to allow the road to be widened. Having served with the HLI and Gordon Highlanders, he declared, “I thought I had seen everything. It must have been some job to move the wall.”
Read more: Herald Diary
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