Andrew Karsgaard
Andrew has always been fascinated by diplomatic and military history and studied it to MA (Hons) level at the University of Glasgow.
His childhood was spent in Canada, India and Germany. One constant during that period were school holidays spent at his grandparents' home in Scotland. That side of his family are from East Lothian and Berwickshire, and it was while visiting an aunt in Coldstream that he came across a Lothians and Border Yeomanry cap badge in an antique shop. Its unusual design - a simple wheatsheaf - intrigued him, and though familiar with other, storied local regiments, He had only vaguely heard of this county-based unit before. The more he learned of them, the more intrigued he became, especially once, soon after starting his research, he came across the experiences of the 1st Lothians in France in 1940, of whose 750 men only 23 escaped injury, death or captivity. He felt compelled to find out more.
Happily, this coincided with a spell living back in Edinburgh, and through connections there and in today's Army Reserve, he was able to meet with family members of some of those Lothians and gain access to unpublished personal accounts, diaries and correspondence. Those brought home to me the human aspect of their story, and determined me to write it down.
Laugh and Be Happy: The Story of the 1st Lothians and Border Yeomanry in France, 1940
The Lothians and Border Yeomanry were a close-knit group of friends, neighbours, and countrymen from a quiet corner of southern Scotland, who mobilised immediately upon the declaration of war in September 1939.
When the German invasion of France and the Low Countries came, the Lothians were deployed in front of the Maginot Line along the eastern border with Germany. Outflanked by the German thrust to their north, cut off from the rest of the BEF, and off-balance, they made a fighting retreat across eastern and northern France, through the chaos of refugee-choked roads and the collapse of the French Army, to their lonely last stand at the small fishing village of St. Valery, where, as the village burned, and parties of men made desperate individual attempts to escape, the bulk of the regiment went into captivity on 12 June 1940.
The 'miracle of Dunkirk', which happened a few days earlier and a few miles to the east, has overshadowed the story of these men who were left behind after the little ships sailed away. This book tells their story.
