HONOURING THE ENEMY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20851, 18 April 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

HONOURING THE ENEMY

AN ABERDONIAN'S GRAVE,

El' LADY ADAMS. Rather more than a hundred years ago a Scotch soldier was killed at the battle of King's Mountain, in North Carolina, while in command of the British troops. Ho was Patrick Ferguson, colonel of the Seventy-first Regiment of the Highland Light Infantry, and ho was " a Ferguson of Pitfour," in Aberdeenshire, where his people still live. Last October there were anniversary celebrations in the Carolinas, when President Hoover delivered the principal oration, and at the close he dedicated a memorial to the Scotch colonel. Then ho formally handed over the memorial to tho people- of Britain, and it was formally accepted by a representative from the British Embassy at Washington. " The Eternal Stone," they call it there, and it is and it will, bo an everlasting and a visible symbol of tho spirit of international friendship between the nations.

Patrick Ferguson was " a bonny fighter." Ho was fighting when ho was fourteen, and where thero was a war there was the soldier lad. If thero was not a war to be had thero was always a quarrel to pick with a Frenchman, and tho excitement of a duel. So when tho first sounds of dispcnce came stealing over to Britain from America thero was Ferguson, thirty-five years old, with twenty-ono years of experience behind him.

He knew (hat the Americans were fino marksmen, and he appears to have felt in his bones that ho would be meeting them at close quarters one day; at any rate, he had invented the breech-loading rifle, and by the time the War of Independence was in full swing there was Colonel Ferguson, all ready with rifles and with orders to make a special corps of riflemen out of volunteers from various regiments, all of them known to bo. picked shots. They had to be good shots to please the Aberdonian, trained as he had been on his father's moors; by this timo ho was acknowledged to bo " tho best marksman alive," and both _ American and British writers commend his sagacity and his humanity. Rumour in Aberdeenshire still has it that on one occasion he saved Washington's life. His enduring memorial glistens and sparkles in tho sunshine, as is tho way of " Aiberdeensheere grenit," and after his name and his rank and the dates of his birth and his death—l 744-1780 —it says: . '

A Soldier of Military Distinction mad of Honour. This Memorial is from tho Citizens of the United States of America in Token of their Appreciation of tho Bonds of Friendship and Peace Between Tliem and the Citizens of the British Empire.