We’ve never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan … and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.

The words of the US President yesterday shock with their under-educated insensitivity.

The Black Watch, the Argylls, the Borderers, the Highland Fusiliers and others fought on the frontline in Afghanistan. 39 Scots died, a disproportionate share, even today, relative to population, because of their mainly infantry roles.

This offense may be new to many today and in other parts of the UK but it’s familiar to Scots. The use of ‘England’ for ‘Britain’ remains endemic amongst elites in England and was perhaps more so in the past. Churchill and others of his class would habitually talk of ‘England.’ You can see its effect when mobs in Tehran or other parts of the Middle East call for ‘Death to the Inglessi’ or some similar word.

It’s most commonly stated at commemorative events when speakers fondly repeat Rupert Brookes‘ First War poem:

IF I should die, think only this of me:
    That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
    In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
    Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England‘s, breathing English air,
    Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.

Why might we have been particularly offended all these years?

Here’s one big reason:

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!