"When the British were retreating, the Gordons were the rear guard. At Elvania Sir John galloped along their line. Ammunition was low and no supplies available. "'My brave Highlanders! You still have your bayonets! Remember Egypt!' the commander shouted. "The pipers took up 'The Cock o' the North,' the sobriquet of the Duke of Gordon, and routed the pursuing French. The Gordons went to Portugal. Almarez is on their flags. They followed the Duke of Wellington back into Spain and were in the fights that sent Joseph Bonaparte's army reeling home. "The Gordons stood with the Black Watch at Quatre Bras, and two days later were at Waterloo. It was the Duchess of Richmond, a daughter of the Duchess of Gordon who recruited the Gordons, who gave the famous ball in Brussels the night before Waterloo. The officers of the Gay Gordons hurried from that levee, which Lord Byron, another Gordon, has commemorated in a poem, to the field of battle. "The feat of the Gordons that day, in grabbing the stirrups of the charging Scots Greys, is one of history's most stirring pages. It is a striking coincidence that in the present war, just ninety-nine years later, the Gordons swung to the Greys' stirrups in another wild charge, this time against the Germans. "The Gordons went to the Afghan War in 1878. In 1881 they campaigned across the veldts against the Boers. The next year they stood at El-Teb and Tel-el-Kebir with their old friends the Black Watch. They marched to Khartum when their namesake, Gordon, was trapped. That over, they went back to India for another Afghan war. They marched by the scenes of their bloody fights when going to the relief of Lucknow. "In 1897 the Gordons were the heroes of all Britain. They, and a regiment of Gurkhas, charged a hill at Dargai in the face of almost superhuman difficulties. Two years later the regiment went to South Africa and fought valiantly through that war. At Eldanslaagte they were part of the column of General French, their present commander. "The red uniform coat of the Gordons is lavishly trimmed in yellow, which brought them the sobriquet of 'Gay Gordons.' Of all the Scotch regiments it has tried the hardest to keep its ranks filled with Scotsmen, 'limbs bred in the purple heather.' "Officially the Gordons are the Ninety-second Highland Infantry."