CLSNA' LamontCentral Forum

This bit is taken from the bio of John Henry Lamont, XXI chief of Clan Lamont. It looks like 100+ years has not changed much.

"            But the Chief’s sixty years have been anything but the life of ease which he might have chosen. They have been strenuous years full of hard and good work. He was educated at Harrow and Bresenose College, Oxford, where he took his degree. In 1876, he gazetted to the 9^th (Queen’s Royal) Lancers in which regiment he remained till 1895, when he left the service. During his period of service in the Army he did his full share of hard fighting, going through the great Afghan War, which all of us who have reached middle age can remember. Reading the newspapers at home we know the anxiety of waiting and watching for news of the gallant sons of our Empire away in the dark regions, then so little known, on the North-West Frontier ofIndia. We heard of skirmishes and advances and skirmishes and retirals, and then lists of casualties and news of homes darkened by bereavement. Then came the almost total annihilation of an important British force, the survivors of which were shut up in Kandahar—no news coming in. Then the organization of the relief expedition under General (now Lord) Roberts. Our gallant Chief was there in command of a troop of cavalry when they marched away from Kabul into the dark unknown of an enemy’s country where if a man fell out of the ranks he a fell prey to the knives of the hostile natives. Besides the heat and the cold which were both fierce, varying 80 degrees almost every day, they had to endure hunger, thirst, and weariness. Three hundred miles of this, and at the end of the road, Ayoob Khan, entrenched, with a force of two or three times their number. One day to think about it, another day to draw the enemy’s fire and feel his positions, and then into it for better or worse. The result we know, but they did not know until it was all over. A crushing defeat was inflicted of Ayoob Khan, and the war was finished. General Roberts did a man’s work, and Lieutenant Lamont did a man’s work and did it well. Our Chief is a true warrior Chief of a great Clan."