THE SCOTS WHO FOUGHT FOR GEORGIA
by Jim Gilchrist
The Scotsman
August 21, 2008, Thursday
In 1918, the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders were sent to Tbilisi,
Georgia, to help quell fighting between ethnic minority groups,
discovers Jim Gilchrist
PARTIES with princesses, palatial accommodation and limitless
caviare… Ninety years before Russia’s current contentious military
incursion into Georgia, the soldiers of the Queen’s Own Cameron
Highlanders were dispatched there in a little-known campaign, and
rather than being seen as occupiers, were made relatively welcome.
This photograph shows officers of the regiment’s 2nd Battalion at
Tbilisi, where they were dispatched on Christmas Day 1918, just as they
expected to be demobbed following the end of the First World War. It
was given to The Scotsman by James Gorie, a retired journalist and
consultant, whose father, Lieutenant Tom Gorie recorded in his diary
what his son describes as "altogether a more chivalrous incursion
than the current murderous conflict".
Tom Gorie, who grew up on the island of Stronsay, Orkney, was a customs
officer in Greenock when the First World War broke out. Joining the
Camerons, he was wounded twice at the Battle of Loos, then found
himself fighting the Turks and the Bulgarians in Salonika, during
which he was mentioned in dispatches. "My father was waiting for his
demob in Salonika," says James Gorie, who lives in Helensburgh. "The
troopship arrived but, to his chagrin, on Christmas Day they were
routed through the Black Sea to Batum and up to Tbilisi."
In Georgia, at that time experiencing a brief respite from Russian
rule, the Camerons, along with other troops from the British Army’s
27th Division, were sent partly as a bulwark against the Bolshevik
threat, but were largely involved in quelling fighting between Azeri,
Armenian and other ethnic minority groups, as well as guarding
the railway linking the Caspian and Black seas. As James suggests,
Britain’s interest in the oil carried on the line was probably not
much different from that of the United States today.
Tiflis, as it was known by the Russians, was an elegant city with its
own opera house, and Lieutenant Gorie and his comrades were billeted in
an impressive mansion. After the privations of the Salonika campaign it
seemed like heaven – almost literally, as he recounted in his diary:
"I shared a bedroom with a large mural depicting angels in glorious
robes. We discovered that we had taken over a chateau belonging to
the Georgian nobility."
When the nobility paid an unexpected visit, however, the officers
expected to be ejected and quite possibly court-martialled for their
unauthorised occupation. Instead, they were made very welcome by
their host, Princess Chavchavadze, who arrived with two daughters
and an Irish governess in tow. According to the Lieutenant’s diary,
a party ensued, combining ballet, Irish jigs and Scots reels while
afternoon tea was served, using the tinned jam supplied by the UK
government to the Georgian army.
Elsewhere, the jam ran out, and British soldiers returning from Baku
complained that rations were so restricted that they were forced to
spread their bread with what they dismissed as "bloody fish paste"
– caviare.
Tom Gorie unsuspectingly had a tenuous brush with the grim shape
of things to come. He struck up a friendship with a multilingual
shoemaker in Tbilisi who knew of a bootmaker in the neighbouring
(and coincidentally named) town of Gori by the name of Dzugashvili,
whose son was an up-and-coming functionary in the Bolshevik government,
who would become Josef Stalin.
James says that "unlike later conflicts, there was a degree of chivalry
about local operations. Local combatants desisted from shooting
when the Camerons moved south to protect he strategic railway which
linked the Caspian and Black Seas. Operatic performances continued,
with local hostilities suspended during the evening performances."
Sadly, it wasn’t all so gentlemanly. In March 1919 a party of drunken
Georgian soldiers set upon the regiment’s medical officer, Captain
J H Magoveny, and beat him to death. Some of the culprits were later
court-martialed and hanged.
In May 1919, the 2nd battalion left for home. Arriving back
at Inverness, they were, according to The Scotsman at the time,
accorded "an enthusiastic public reception… on their return from
Salonika". The report added that "no battalion of the Camerons have had
a more strenuous time during the war", but said nothing about Georgia.
Tom Gorie, who died in 1968, often talked about his time there, says
James, "although he didn’t talk about the bloodshed on the Western
front. That seems to be something that most soldiers repressed. He
was lucky to survive."