Prince Charles in uniform of the Toronto Scottish

[Mike_Oettle]

Thank you, Richard, for those interesting pointers. The prince’s choice of a cheap dirk is interesting – perhaps even out of character.

Bruce, thank you for the information about field marshals. But I must point out that Marshall is a name, whereas marshal is a position (the rank of field marshal, the Earl Marshal of England, and other less important marshals.

And Hibernicus, the Toronto Scottish are the only regiment outside Britain that wear the hodden grey kilt (and jacket). In fact they are now the only regiment that wears hodden grey, since the London Scottish, whose uniform was adopted by the Toronto regiment, and with which they were formally affiliated, have been incorporated into a holus-bolus unit called the London Regiment, which includes a company each of London Scottish, London Irish Rifles, The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment and the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, each of which wear the badges of their former regiments.
The combined regiment has a tartan, but it is worn only in the form of (civilian wear) regimental ties (unless somebody in the unit has had it woven at kilt weight for civilian wear).
The regimental band incorporates musicians from all four regiments, wearing the old regimental uniforms, which means that there is at least one piper in hodden grey and one in a saffron kilt.
According to Wiki, the unit is also the only army infantry reserve regiment that is part of the Guards Division, an interesting affiliation.

Near the bottom of the list of field marshals in the Wiki article is an entry for a South African, Jan Christian Smuts. He was a general in the Boer forces (wearing civilian clothing) during the guerrilla phase of the South African War (previously he had been the very young Attorney-General of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek), and became a regular general in the South African Army when the Union Defence Force was formed in 1913.
He and General Louis Botha (also a Boer War general officer who wore civvies) undertook duties in the Union Defence Force when it was formed in 1913, alongside serving in the South African government, Botha as Prime Minister and Smuts holding a number of portfolios in his Cabinet.
They both took part in suppressing the rebellion of Boer forces in 1914 (who opposed fighting in what they called Britain’s war) and then served in the South West Africa campaign.
Smuts was then appointed general officer commanding the British forces in East Africa, campaigning against German forces in what is now Tanzania.
Following this appointment he was summoned to London to be part of the War Cabinet.
In this role he was a prime advocate of the formation in 1918 of the Royal Air Force (out of the Royal Flying Corps [RFC, British Army] and the Royal Naval Air Service [RNAS]).
Smuts and Botha were present at Versailles following the conclusion of hostilities, and Botha died there.
This meant that Smuts succeeded as Prime Minister. In 1924 he oversaw the creation of the South African Air Force (only the second separate air force in the world, and formed solely out of an army flying corps).
In the same year he lost a general election and went into opposition, returning to the office of Prime Minister following the outbreak of war.
He was raised to the rank of Field Marshal in 1941.