Delville Wood question

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Attrition
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Delville Wood question

#1

Post by Attrition » 31 Jul 2014, 17:12

"Piper Sandy Grieve of the Black Watch, who had fought against the South African Boers as part of the Highland Brigade, at the Battle of Magersfontein in 1899 and been wounded through the cheeks, played the South Africans out."

Does anyone know the source of this sentence? It describes the relief of the South Africans from Delville Wood. Thanks

Jon Clarke
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Re: Delville Wood question

#2

Post by Jon Clarke » 31 Jul 2014, 18:36

I don't know if it's what you were looking for but a search of Google Books for 'Piper Sandy Grieve' brings up a reference to Ian S Uys's Rollcall: The Delville Wood Story which is unfortunately in 'snippet' format. However it is still possible to extract the following:

Piper Sandy Grieve of the Black Watch (9th Div) piped the remnants of the brigade out of Delville Wood and Longueval. He had served with the Scottish Borderers as a boy piper at Magersfontein and still suffered the effects of a Boer bullet which passed through both cheeks & clipped his tongue.

The snippet version can be found at:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FcVwAAAAIAAJ&q

Incidentally the Amazon link shows it's available at the very reasonable :wink: price of £104.54! 8O 8O 8O

It appears that similar information can be found in Neil D Orpen's The Cape Town Highlanders, 1885-1985 which can be bought for much less from Abebooks but presumably deals with the battle in a more general way.


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Attrition
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Re: Delville Wood question

#3

Post by Attrition » 31 Jul 2014, 20:12

Thanks very much, I didn't think of that. (P. 117)

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