In the spring of 1944 the 1st Battalion King's Own Scottish Borderers was stationed at Selkirk, part of 9 British Infantry Brigade, 3rd British Infantry Division — the division earmarked to land on SWORD Beach. Alongside exercises with troops on the ground, the officers of the battalion were put through a series of TEWTs — Tactical Exercises Without Troops — in which syndicates of officers walked real ground and talked through how they would fight a battle on it.

We were contacted via Facebook by Chalky White, whose father was Lance Corporal Noel White. Noel wearing his pal's Piper uniform He had a couple of photos of his Dad with his mates and wanted to confirm if one of them was Private Mark Tucker. Chalky said, "Dad was a Bren gunner and they came under fire and were pinned. My Dad got himself into a bit of trouble so Tucker ran to help him, he was killed pulling my Dad to cover. My Dad never got over that, ever". Since his Dad's p

'Victory in Europe' day, 1945 was spent in a small town in Germany. The War Diary for 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers on the 7th and 8th of May report the following: 7th May 1945: The Bn moved to IBBENBUREN leaving DELMENHORST at 0715 and arriving at 1430. The tracked column arrived three hours later and the Bn was settled in by 1800 hrs with positions as follows:- Bn HQ 988091; "A" Coy 991095; "B" Coy 997101; "C" Coy 988088; "D" Coy 990083; "S" Coy 038072. The Bn was co

For those that are interested in the process of researching our 1st KOSB veterans, I wanted to highlight one in particular that is close to my heart. Exhibit A: 'Unknown, undated Wedding photo of 1st KOSB piper' Many years ago (most likely the 80s) I went through my Grandad's photo album with him and scrawled a couple of dates/place names on the pages. I hadn't done it with this photo so knew nothing about it. My only clue was that the piper is also in my Grandad's Wedding Ph

August 19441st KOSB, 'played the pipes in honour of an American airman shot by the SS'.

One of our contributors, Rob Bowie, sent us some images of a 50 Franc French bank note that was signed by members of 1st KOSB's Signals section a week before D-Day. The note was kept by Rob's Father-in law, Norman Bowie, and, years later, Rob tried to find who the people were behind the signatures. We had a look at it but also didn't make much progress until we were checking medal cards for those wounded in action and noticed that, if the soldier survived, they normally sign

The scheme was approved at the end of 1942 and called for approximately 1500 Canadian officers at the outset, however this was reduced to roughly 625 by the time of the Normandy landings (Mostly due to them being needed by their own Regiments by that time).