Professor John Robertson OBA

With the UK media again saturated with frankly disturbing jingoism based on myths about the two world, it seems like a good moment to repeat this attempt to resolve the alleged myth that Scots had given more in blood on the WWI battlefields.

On 10th August 2014, with clear political intent, the Scotsman allowed Sir Hew Strachan to confirm it as a myth:

Great War worst for Scots troops ‘a myth’

https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/great-war-worst-scots-troops-myth-1529401

In Patrick Watt’s Manpower, Myth and Memory: Analysing Scotland’s Military Contribution to the Great War in the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, on 24th May 2019 based on extensive research, a different fact emerges:

Overall, 91,800 out of the 702,410 fatalities sustained by the British Army were born in Scotland. This is a 13.07 per cent share of the British total, some 2.6 per cent higher than Scotland’s share of the British population. Even using the highest estimate of British army casualties supplied by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (759,062 soldiers) gives a 12.09 per cent share of the British total, compared to 10.47 per cent of the British
population. The combined total of war dead for all three services – 102,500 soldiers, sailors and airmen – means that 13.78 per cent of the ‘official’ British total from 1921, or 12.32 per cent of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission total were born in Scotland. Therefore, it can be said with certainty that men born in Scotland did suffer disproportionately more deaths during the war than the other nations of the United Kingdom.

It’s a long hard read at:

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/file:///D:/Users/John/Downloads/Manpower_Myth_and_Memory_Analysing_Scotl.pdf

I’m going to dispute the arithmetic.

At total of 702 410 UK Army fatalities.

With 8% of the UK population, all things being equal, Scotland might have been expected to suffer 8% of the 702 410 or 56 192 but had 91 800, 63% more!