Cape Town Highlanders Regiment CTH Shoulder Title

Guaranteed original. Complete & intact.

This is an original Cape Town Highlanders Regiment shoulder title badge for sale. In good condition. Please see our other items for more original WW1, WW2 & post war British military shoulder titles for sale including other Cape Town Highlanders cap badges, collar badges & shoulder titles.

The Cape Town Highlanders Regiment is a mechanised infantry regiment of the South African Army. As a reserve unit, it has a status roughly equivalent to that of a British Territorial Army or United States Army National Guard unit. Descendants of Scottish immigrants to South Africa raised the Cape Town Highlanders in 1885. On 24 April of the same year, their services were accepted – since then, this date has always been celebrated as the regiment’s official birthday.

The regiment first saw active duty during the Bechuanaland Campaign that was fought in the Northern Cape in 1896. At the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Boer War the regiment was again mobilised for active duty. During the war the regiment or elements thereof took part in several actions, including the relief of Kimberley. The Duke of Connaught and Strathearn became colonel-in-chief of the regiment in 1906, and the regiment’s name was thus changed to the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn’s Own Cape Town Highlanders. When the regiment was embodied in the Citizen Force in 1913, the title was changed to 6th Infantry (Duke of Connaught and Strathearn’s Own Cape Town Highlanders).

During World War I the Cape Town Highlanders first fought against Germany in German South West Africa, but was subsequently combined with the Transvaal Scottish Regiment to form the 4th South African Infantry (South African Scottish) Battalion, part of the 1st South African Brigade. (The South African Scottish, like various similar units, was formed by the South African government since a clause in the Defence Act of that time prohibited existing units from serving so far outside the country’s borders.) After fighting in the Senussi Campaign in North Africa the brigade was shipped to France, where it took part in many battles between 1916 and 1918, including the famous Battle of Delville Wood. The title was changed again, in 1932, to Cape Town Highlanders (Duke of Connaught and Strathearn’s Own).

At the outbreak of World War II in 1939 the regiment was again mobilised. However, it did not fight in the first campaign of the South African Army in the war, the Abyssinian Campaign of 1940 to 1941. However, in mid-1941, the regiment was briefly sent to Egypt to escort thousands of Italian prisoners of war to internment camps in South Africa; it returned to Egypt in late June of the same year to join the newly arrived South African 1st Infantry Division in the Western Desert.

The Cape Town Highlanders fought in all of the major battles of the Western Desert Campaign, including the Battle of El Alamein. Indeed, the regiment is one of only three in the world (all of them South African) to have not only the usual two Alamein battle honours – “Alamein Defence” and “El Alamein” – but a third, “Alamein Box”, which resulted from a separate action during the initial defence. This action played a significant role in halting Rommel’s advance on the tired and depleted British Eighth Army.

During the regiment’s subsequent deployment to Italy, the regiment was temporarily combined with South Africa’s senior Scottish unit, the First City Regiment, to form the First City/Cape Town Highlanders. This combined unit fought from Battle of Monte Cassino to the Alps, culminating in the heroic capture at bayonet-point of the strategic peak of Monte Sole as part of the South African 6th Armoured Division.

In 1947, Queen Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother) was appointed colonel-in-chief, and from 1948 until South Africa became a republic in 1961, the regiment was the Queen’s Own Cape Town Highlanders.