Tour Scotland Video Earl Wavell Gate Balhousie Castle Perth Perthshire

Tour Scotland video of the Earl Wavell Gate on ancestry visit to Balhousie Castle in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland. The gate pays tribute to Field Marshal the Rt Hon Archibald Percival Wavell, who spent 43 years as a soldier with the historic Black Watch regiment, with four of these as a colonel. Archibald Percival Wavell, the son of Major General Archibald Graham Wavell, was born on May 5, 1883, at Colchester, England. After spending 3 years in Summer Fields, the famous preparatory school at Oxford, he won a scholarship to Winchester and entered in 1896. As a student, he developed a well disciplined and comprehensive intellectual ability. When he was 17 he passed on to Sandhurst; a year later he was commissioned into the Black Watch. In 1901 he was sent to South Africa, where he served as a subaltern in the later stages of the Boer War. After the war Wavell continued his vigorous pursuit of a military career. In 1903 he went to India, where he remained for five years and served with distinction. Leaving there in 1908, he entered the staff college at Camberly, which, at that time, represented the stepping stone to extraregimental promotion. He then spent several years in Russia studying the language and customs of the people and attending army maneuvers. In 1912, at the age of 29, he was appointed to the War Office. When World War I broke out, Wavell was eager to serve in France, and in September 1914 his opportunity came. He spent most of the next two years in France, but in 1915 he managed a short leave to marry Eugenie Marie Quirk in England. In 1916 he was back in France and engaged in an attack at Ypres Salient, where he was wounded and lost his left eye. After a short convalescence he returned to France for another brief tour, and then later in the year he was sent to Russia to serve as the British military representative on the staff of the Grand Duke Nicholas. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, however, he was again reassigned and rounded out the war years serving in the Near East under Gen. Allenby, a man from whom he learned lasting lessons about conduct of war.

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