Seaforth officers' shopping list

[Troglodyte]

Putting together a kilt outfit is always a shock to the bank-ballance, and most of us do so in easy stages whilst allowing budget and personal taste govern the choice.

This list is the requirment of an officer in the Seaforth Highlanders during the Great War, and is taken from the memoires of an Englishman who ran away from home to join up at the start of the conflict, after his coastal home town of Hartlepool had been bombarded by German warships. The Seaforths were the farthest away.

He entered as a private soldier, advanced quickly through the ranks of NCOs, and was selected for officer training. At the time, officers were expected to provide their own kit, and this list is the basic requirements. The items marked with an X are those he already had as part of standard issue for an NCO or private; the rest he would have to buy himself.

The account is by Norman Collins who lived to be 100 years old, and is entitled Last Man Standing. Many of the photographs in the book are Collins' own from his time in the trenches, and from when he revisited the battle scenes in later life.

Interestingly, and rather poignantly, he says of The Armistice that it came too late, as eveyone was already dead. And he tells of the mean and selfish hostility of a surprising number of French locals to the soldiers - refusing them water on their marches up to the Front, or the dry shelter of a barn to sleep in when coming back in depleted numbers and battle-weary. Not what we normally hear...



Collins marks the prices in pounds-shillings-pence (Lsd) and comes up with a combined cost of about £65. As a junior officer, his pay would have been about two pounds, thirteen shillings a week, before compulsary 'stoppages'. The kilt is one of the most expensive items, while the revolver, Sam Browne belt and Skean Dhu are all similar in price. He notes these a minimum prices, and a mens average earnings at the time was about £70 - so almost a year's earnings. Average earnings today are about £27,000.

Although not listed here, he elsewhere mentions his basket-hilt broad-sword, which he carried as an NCO and officer, and which would have formed a significant part of his kit, saying the weapon was quite unsuited to trench warfare.