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REEL OF THE 51ST DIVISION
(R8x32)
Jimmy Atkinson RSCDS Book 13
1- 8
1s set & cast below 3s & lead up to face 1
st
corners
9-16
1s set & turn 1
st
corners RH to balance in diagonal line, 1s turn LH to
face 2
nd
corners
17-24
1s set & turn 2
nd
corners RH to Balance-in-Line, 1s turn LH to
2
nd
place own sides
25-32
2s+1s+3s circle 6H round & back
At the beginning of World War II, Britain sent soldiers and equipment to France to support the country in case of
a German invasion, which duly took place in mid-May, 1940. The 51
st
(Highland) Division under Major-General
Victor Fortune formed part of the British Expeditionary Force's GHQ reserve. According to popular belief, the 51
st
(Highland) Division's task was to cover the retreat at Dunkirk in late May/early June, 1940; as it turns out, when
the evacuation of Dunkirk took place the 51
st
was nowhere near Dunkirk, instead helping the French Army slow
the German's advance on Paris near Abbeville (south of the river Somme, about 80 km from Dunkirk) under
General Maxime Weygand.
While other parts of the British Army escaped across the Channel, the 51
st
Division was ordered to stay put and
fight in order to shame the French into not surrendering – supposedly on Churchill's orders. When the situation
became hopeless and the French were about to throw in the towel, the commanders of the 51
st
decided to fight
their way back to the coast in contravention of their orders. Parts of the division (the 7
th
and 8
th
Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders) made it to Le Havre, taking heavy casualties, but the rest (the Seaforth Highlanders,
Cameron Highlanders, Gordon Highlanders and the Black Watch) reached the sea near St Valéry-en-Caux. In spite
of a half-heartedly supported attempt to get them out they didn't make it across – five German divisions under
Rommel had surrounded the place and were making it impossible by artillery fire for the soldiers to get into
boats for the crossing. In face of this situation, and running out of ammunition after a valiant attempt to break
out, Major-General Fortune surrendered the remainders of his division (about 10,000 men) to Rommel on 12 June
1940.
Some of the officers of the original 51
st
(Highland) Division ended up in a POW camp near Salzburg (Oflag VII-C in
Laufen – “Oflag” being an abbreviation of Offiziers-Lager or “officers' prison camp”). Since dancing was always a
big part of Scottish military life, it comes as no surprise that the POWs started a dance class to pass the time, of
which they had lots on their hands - according to the Third Geneva Convention, captured officers were not
obliged to work (although they could volunteer if they wanted). At first the dancers were reduced to hand
clapping and counts for music, but later on managed to obtain musical instruments such as practice chanters and
even an accordion through the Red Cross. Attire was military uniforms and field boots rather than kilts and
ghillies, since the former were all that was available to the POWs. Their repertoire consisted of dances they
remembered as well as newly-invented ones.
The Reel of the 51
st
Division, originally called The 51
st
Country Dance (Laufen Reel), was invented during the
winter of 1940 by three officers, namely Lt. Jimmy Atkinson (Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders), Lt. Peter Oliver
(4
th
Seaforth Highlanders) and Lt. Col. Tom Harris Hunter (51
st
Division Logistics Group RASC). Jim Healy says:
The basic idea of the central 16 bars of the dance was worked out by […] Jimmy Atkinson […] on the
march from St Valéry on the French Atlantic coast to the POW camp at Laufen in Germany. The concept
of the 16 bars was to reproduce the saltire shoulder flash of the 51
st
Division and Jimmy Atkinson is on
record as saying it was a variation on the diagonal of Scottish Reform.
The circle at the end was added at the suggestion of Peter Oliver, who liked it in Hamilton House. The dance was
performed before the 51
st
Division's commander, Major-General Fortune, in a different POW camp (Oflag VI-B in
Warburg, Westphalia), on Hallowe'en the next year, and Fortune formally approved the dance and its name.
In the camp, Lt. Col. Harris Hunter, incidentally having served as Chairman of the (R)SCDS Perth & Perthshire
Branch before the war (and about to do so again afterwards), was considered most authoritative as far as country
dancing was concerned, and Atkinson has stated in an interview that he consulted Harris Hunter about the dance
for this reason.
Even so, the original version of the dance looked somewhat different from the one popular today; it used a 5-
couple set instead of today's 4-couple set, and, according to some sources, the dance originally started not with
set, cast off two places but instead with a cast off three places, lead up and bow to your corner! However, the
dance description the POWs sent to Scotland later on does specify setting and then casting off three places, and
the Society changed the dance before publication in order to adapt it to the customary 4-couple set.
(Today's 5-couple dances such as the Black Mountain Reel, with 1st and 3rd couples starting simultaneously and 1st couple
progressing to 3rd place for their second turn, hadn't been invented yet, and, in fact, no such dance was published by the
Society until very recently when the RSCDS has (re-)published Hugh Foss's dance, Polharrow Burn.)
The original devisers never approved of the set change, and indeed RSCDS Perth Branch recently agreed to do the
dance in 5-couple sets in their 80th anniversary year (2005).
Harris Hunter's Society connection would also tend to counter the popular conception that the setting in the
balance-in-line takes place not using pas de basque, but using high cuts (which the soldiers would know from
Highland dancing). Some people also feel that the Reel of the 51
st
should only be danced by men, but that
restriction had much more to do with the fact that there were no women around in the Oflag where the dance
was originally invented than with military “machismo”. The dance description does refer to “ladies”, and
according to the devisers the dance was always intended as a standard social dance. By the same token, “birling
crept in some variations but that is not how the dance was devised or intended” [Jim Healy].
Lt. Col. Harris Hunter eventually managed to send a description of the 51
st
Country Dance to his wife in Perth,
Scotland, which must have been quite an achievement – at first, the German censors considered the dance
notation a type of code and didn't want to pass it along. It appears that Harris Hunter arranged a demonstration
in order to convince the camp authorities of the communication's innocuousness. The Scottish Country Dance
Society's Perth branch printed the description and sold copies for the benefit of the Red Cross (Jean Milligan, the
co-founder of the Society, is said to have raised more than £160 from sales of the leaflet). Also at that time, the
dance was renamed to The St Valéry Reel.
After some deliberation the Society decided to publish the dance – a big step, since they had so far steadfastly
refused to print newly-invented dances. It did take some Royal prodding, as the 1944 Bulletin of the SCDS tells
us:
Mrs Hamilton-Meikle (Chairman) in a few well-chosen words asked Her Majesty to accept the book (Books
1-12) as a token of the SCDS's loyalty and affection for the Throne; Mrs Stewart (Vice-President) then
handed the book to the Queen, who was obviously very pleased and interested, and in the course of her
reply showed her appreciation of the work of the Society in collecting dances from various parts of the
country and publishing them. On hearing about the dance The 51
st
Division Reel, sent from a German
Prisoner of War camp, Her Majesty said she hoped it would be published some day.
(The queen in those days, of course, was the late Queen Elizabeth, remembered today as The Queen Mother; her
daughter, the present Queen Elizabeth II., was about to become – and remains – the Patron of the Society.)
So, in spite of their reservations, the Society could hardly refuse to publish the dance as soon as was
conveniently possible, and it ended up in Book XIII, the Victory Book. The dance did get renamed to The Reel of
the 51st Division, since it seemed a lot more appropriate to commemorate the military valour of the division than
to be constantly reminded of the defeat at St Valéry or the bleak time in German captivity.
Unfortunately, the original music, composed by Hector Ross (4
th
Seaforths – London Scottish), has been lost; the
dance acquired the music customary today, “The Drunken Piper”, when it was published by the SCDS.
