Book Review: Scottish Divisions in the World Wars

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This slim book is number 56 in the Elite series published by Osprey, a series which covers military formations and forces of note through the ages and this particular volume is about the British Army divisions designated as Scottish during the First and Second World Wars.

The divisions in question are the 51st (Highland), the 52nd (Lowland), 9th (Scottish), 15th (Scottish). It is important to note that for the First World War in particular by no means all Scottish soldiers or indeed Scottish battalions served in a Scottish division. The Regular Army battalions already existing at the start of the First World War were assigned to divisions which had no particular link to any part of the UK and the book does make this point.

The book is organised into two brief introduction sections and then sections on each of the divisions in turn during the First World War followed by the same for the Second World War. Even though it is a thin volume, I found the lack of a contents page an inconvenience. The index at the end helps find the entries on a unit, but a contents page would make the structure of the book much easier to navigate.

The section on each division includes a brief history of the raising of the formation and then several pages on the actions it fought in. This forms the meat of the book and is an excellent read, allowing someone interested in a particular formation to follow it from battle to battle and as it moved between theatres of action. The changes to the makeup of the division as units were transferred in and out are covered too, but in less detail. There is only one organisation diagram per divisional entry, making it is hard to determine which battalions were in the division at times other than the illustrated in the diagram. Divisional orders of battle at each major change in each division’s makeup would have been useful.