1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [156]
Thousands of ex-servicemen had settled in Canada in the decade before the war and since they were self-evidently young men of adventurous spirit, they were the right type or, as Farquhar himself put it, ‘the best of the breed’. So many of them flocked from all over Canada to join up that, even among these desirable recruits, the regiment was able to have the pick of the bunch. There were prospectors, farmers, professional and business men, lumberjacks, even some cowboys and a prize-fighter or two. Fifty, who called themselves The Legion of Frontiersmen’ banded together and arrived in a body and the Edmonton pipe band in full Highland regalia, played themselves into the recruiting office and joined up en masse, announcing that they had ‘come to play the regiment to France and back again’. The band was enrolled even before the Battalion was complete. Hamilton Gault himself contributed $100,000 to set the ball rolling and the Battalion was raised and equipped in the short space of ten days.
Only one in ten of its members had been born in Canada. Sixty-five per cent were English, 15 per cent were Scots and 10 per cent had been born in Ireland, some had been in Canada for as long as twelve years, some for a matter of months, but they considered themselves Canadian to a man. Of 1,100 recruits 1,049 had served in the Army or the Navy, almost half of those had seen war service and between them they wore the ribbons of 771 campaign and service medals. There were two sections of ex-guardsmen, two of ex-riflemen and two of ex-public school boys. They were tough and they were fit. They also had royal patronage. Colonel Farquhar was Military Secretary to the Duke of Connaught, the Governor General of Canada, who had not only released him so that he could take command of the battalion but had also agreed to part with his ADC and another member of his personal staff, to form a nucleus of officers. Gault himself was appointed senior captain and other officers had been found among the hundreds of willing volunteers.
The Duke of Connaught had also, in a sense, given his daughter and the Battalion, now bearing her name, basked in the distinction of having the prettiest and most glamorous Colonel-in-Chief of any Battalion anywhere. Princess Patricia of Connaught took her duties seriously and intended to be more than just the figurehead of her Regiment and she began by making them a unique and personal gift. On Sunday 23 August, while the British Expeditionary Force was in the thick of its first engagement at Mons, Princess Patricia presented the Regiment with its own colours. She had designed the banner herself, cut out the red material with her own hands, fringed it with gold and embroidered her own entwined initials as a centrepiece. It had taken the princess a week of hard work and late nights to complete it but the pleasure and pride of the men made it more than worthwhile. Five days later the colours, escorted by a guard of honour, were carried proudly at the head of the Regiment as the Patricias marched on board ship to the skirling strains of their own pipe band. The anticlimax came when they were forced to disembark again at Quebec. The Patricias, as they were now called even on the parade ground, finally