On leaving the 51st Highland Division Major General Douglas Wimberley published his own farewell
" Order of the Day to all Ranks of the 51st Highland Division "
" On giving up command of the 51st Highland Division, in which I have served for
the past three years, the Division, moreover, in which I was so proud also to
have been numbered in the last Great War, I find it difficult to express to you
what I feel.
" It is naturally easiest on this occasion merely to recall to memory some of
the milestones passed in the long road which we have travelled together, ever
onwards, from Scotland right across Africa and into Europe.
" For instance, the many tributes which your spirit, discipline and behaviour
brought from those leaders best qualified to compare us with other Divisions in
those now far-off days at home.
" ALAMEIN, and that moonlight night, when you went into your first battle, new
and untried as individuals, but bearing in your historic tartans and your Pipes
an inheritance of centuries of gallantry from your forebears, and each bearing
Scotland's banner in your hearts.
" MERSA BREGA and its mines, and our gallant Engineers who died as we went on.
" BUERAT, and the rapid advance to TRIPOLI, when your spirit to get forward,
from the leading Highlander to the very back of the Division's Administrative
Services, resembled a living flame.
" MARETH, when you showed that the Highland Division could defend as well as
attack.
" The race for SFAX. That hard fight at AKARIT, when you pressed through mines
and wire and defences as on a field-day, but paid the inevitable price for your
gallantry.
"The SICILIAN beaches; and now FRANCOFONTE, GERBINI, SFERRO and its hills,
almost still reverberating with the crash of our artillery as our Gunners
hammered the German infantry and tanks, and as our `Die-hard' machine-gunners
fired their belts on the bullet-swept tops of SAN ANTONIO.
" By your deeds, it is not too much to claim that you have added to the pages of
military history, pages which may well bear comparison with the stories of our
youth, telling us of our kinsmen who fought at Bannockburn, Culloden, Waterloo,
the Alma, and at Loos. Further, in achieving this, you have earned, as is indeed
your due, the grateful acknowledgments of your Country.
" All this, however, belongs to the past. All this can be summed up by one verse
recently written of the Division in the Scots Press :
` Ye canna mak' a sojer wi' braid an' trappin's braw, Nor gie him fightin'
spirit when his back's ag'in the wa'. It's the breedin' in the callants that
winna let them whine, The bluid o' generations frae lang, lang syne.'
" It is the future which matters most. It is concerning the future about which I
would therefore remind you to-day, and especially those thousands of you who
have joined the Highland Division since we left Egypt.
" No individual, no Regiment, no Division can afford to rest on its laurels.
Just as your fathers in the Highland Division won their proud position as the
premier fighting formation in 1917 and kept it through many weary months, so
must you, in this generation, maintain your reputation to the end of the road.
To do this, you must ever set your own standards, you must' gang your ain gait '
; you must choose the hard and not the easy path. Your discipline and behaviour,
your saluting, your battle drill, your battle technique must continually be
overhauled and be kept at the highest level, come what may.
" Provided all this is maintained, then, with your national background and your
great morale, you will, in due course and God willing, fight your last battle as
bravely and successfully as you fought your first-proud that all must still
grant to you your Alamein motto of `Second to None.'
" For myself, I can best thank you in the farewell words of my great predecessor
Sir Colin Campbell, who led our same famous Highland Regiments to such glory
nearly one hundred years ago
From the bottom of my heart."
DN WIMBERLEY
Major General