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The Prince of Wales unveils a statue dedicated to the Gordon Highlanders in Aberdeen
15th October 2011
The Prince of Wales praised the army regiment that played such "an important part" in his upbringing, as he unveiled a commemorative statue to the Gordon Highlanders in Aberdeen.
Hundreds of people gathered around the city's Castlegate today, where The Prince, known as The Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, arrived to celebrate officially the memory of the Regiment, which served the North-East of Scotland for 200 years.
Former soldiers and veterans of the Gordon Highlanders proudly watched as their last Colonel-in-Chief addressed them fondly.
In his speech before the unveiling, His Royal Highness said it meant a great deal to him to have been invited to the event, which commemorates his old local Regiment.
He said: "When I was a child in the 1950s some of my earliest memories were of old Gordon Highlanders who had fought their way through the last war, some of them suffering terribly in Japanese prisoner of war camps, and then found their way back to Balmoral.
"These men formed an important part of my upbringing and so you can perhaps imagine what an enormously proud moment it was when Her Majesty appointed me as Colonel-in-Chief of the Gordon Highlanders in 1977, not only because it was such a famous Highland Regiment, with a magnificent reputation, but because it was, literally, a local family Regiment in which so many people I knew and looked up to had served."
The three-dimensional bronze statue, commissioned by Aberdeen City Council and campaigned for over a number of years, features two Gordon Highlanders set on a granite plinth.
One is from the early days of the Regiment, and the other from its closing years before the amalgamation in 1994 when it became part of the Highlanders.
The sculptor Mark Richards, who has been working closely with the Gordon Highlanders to produce the statue, said: "I think it looks absolutely fabulous, better than I could have ever imagined."