Guard Mounting at Windsor - Changing Guard (1896)

The Colonel Commanding the Scots guards (1896)

An Inspection Group of the Officers of the 1st Scots Guards (1896)

How Company Sergeant Major Joseph Barwick, OF The 1^st Battalion Scots Guards, Won The Military Cross At The First Battle Of Ypres

  A striking illustration of the almost incalculable debt, which the British Army owes to the courage, ability and devotion to duty of its veteran non-commissioned officers, is furnished by the series of valuable services which gained Company Sergeant Major Joseph Barwick, of the 1^st Scots Guards, the Military Cross during the First Battle of Ypres. On October 26^th 1914, the 1^st Scots Guards were stationed, with the rest of the 1^st Brigade, a little to the north of Gheluvelt, and sergeant Major Barwick, who is a crack shot, was engaged in sniping from the upper portion of a damaged cottage some distance in advance of our first line trenches.  While thus employed, he noticed that the Germans had broken through on the right of the position occupied by his battalion, which could necessitate an immediate change of front, and at once resolved to run back and warn his company commander.  He had to traverse a distance of some three hundred yards, over perfectly open ground, in full view of the enemy.  But, though bullets were whistling past his head all the time, he reached the trenches without mishap, and having made his report, volunteered to go back to the battalion headquarters, eight hundred yards distant, for reinforcements.  The ground over which he had to pass was being very heavily shelled, but he accomplished the double journey in safety, and, on his return to the firing line, found that, thanks to the warning which he had brought, our position had been changed in time, and that all the Germans who had broken through on our right flank-some four hundred in number-had been either killed or made prisoner. During the next few days the 1^st Brigade was very heavily engaged and suffered terrible losses, particularly on October 31^st, when the Germans made a furious attack in great force upon Gheluvelt, and the whole of the 1^st Division was obliged to fall back to a line resting on the junction of the Frezenberg road with the Ypres Menin highway.  The 1^st Coldstreams were practically wiped out as a fighting unit, and every single officer of Sergeant Major Barwick’s company of the 1^st Scots guards either killed or severely wounded as to be unfit for duty.  Barwick had therefore to take command of the remnant of his company, a position that he held from November 2^nd to November 10^th.  During this period, he, at great personal risk, acted as observer for the artillery supporting his brigade, and every morning sent sketches of any new positions and saps made by the Germans during the night.  The information he furnished proved of the highest value, and enabled the artillery to render the successive positions occupied by the enemy untenable, and prevented them from massing for an attack on this portion of our front. This brave non-commissioned officer’s services were lost to his country for a time on November 10^th on which day he was wounded by shrapnel in no less than thirteen places-viz, seven in the left leg, one in the right leg, and five in the left arm!  Happily none of his wounds was of a very serious nature, and he recovered. Sergeant Major Barwick, who is thirty-three years of age, is a Yorkshire man, and was born at Burley in Wharfedale, near LeedsExtracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'     

How Sergeant S. Lemon Of The 2^nd Battalion Scots Guards, Won The D.C.M. At Neuve Chapelle

    The Battle of Neuve Chapelle, which began in the early morning of March 10^th 1915, and lasted three days, will be long remembered as the first occasion in the Great War on which we successfully turned the enemy’s plan of massed artillery attacks against himself.  Four shells to the yard was the British fire, and in this action alone there was use of artillery than in a year and a half of the South African War.  Every variety of gun was employed-field gun, field howitzer, sixty-pounder, coast defence gun-and so terrific was the bombardment that in a little over half an hour the trenches along nearly three miles of the German front, trenches upon which months of labour had been expended, were reduced to a welter of earth, dust and horribly mutilated bodies.  Neuve Chapelle was a decisive victory-though, owing to a variety of unforeseen circumstances, not nearly so decisive as had been generally hoped for-but it was a terribly costly one.  Over 2,500 of our gallant fellows lay dead upon the field; more than three times that number were wounded.  The resources of the R.A.M.C. were, in consequence, severely taxed, for there were thousands of stricken Germans as well as British in need of Succour, and accordingly men were detailed from various regiments to assist the field ambulances in the task of collecting the wounded.  Among them was Lance-corporal-now sergeant Lemon, of the 2^nd Scots Guards.  Lemon was a veteran of the Boer War, and wore on his breast the South African medals conferred by Queen Victoria and King Edward, and also the Long Service Medal, for he had served his country for twenty-one years.  He was now close upon forty, having been born a Headgrove, Dorsetshire,in November 1875; but he did not spare himself, and laboured at his work of mercy with the untiring energy of a man in the prime of youth.  Every day from March 10^th to March 14^th, with his hospital box slung over his right shoulder and his capacious hospital water bottle over his left, he went out to direct the stretcher-bearers and render first aid to the wounded.   

            It was dangerous as well as arduous work, for during the greater part of the time he was under fire, and sometimes, as he knelt to bind the wounds or moisten the lips of some poor sufferer, a bullet would hum past his head, or a sell so close as to cause him to hold his breath.  But for four days he met with no mishap.  Then on fifth, just as he had picked up and attached to his belt a German helmet, with the intention of keeping it as a souvenir of the Great Battle, he felt a burning pain in his right thigh, and knew that hr had received a souvenir of a different kind.  Most men would have promptly made their way to the nearest field ambulance to have the wound attended to, but Lennon happened to be of the stuff whereof heroes are formed.  He did not think f himself; he though only of the helpless men, friend and foe, lying all around him, who so urgently needed his help, and so long as he could crawl and see he was resolved to do his best for them.  And so, setting his teeth, he limped on, but had gone but a few paces when he stumbled and fell into a huge hole made by a high explosive shell, and when he tried to rise, the effort was vain.  Happily, he was soon found and carried to an ambulance and thence to hospital, and when the awards to the heroes of Neuve Chapelle were distributed, Lace-Corporal Lemon was not forgotten, the D.C.M. being conferred upon him, “for good conduct and devotion.”   Extracted from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'  

WILLIAM REYNOLDS (Private)   Scots (Fusilier) Guards            Decorated for his gallant behaviours on September 20^th 1854, at the battle of Alma, Crimea, when the formation of the line being thrown into disorder, Reynolds rallied the men round the Colours. 

US Bombadier by Chris Collingwood (AP)