I WONDER WHAT was going through Gordon Brown’s mind as he watched the 3rd Battalion of the Black Watch swinging past him through the streets of Kirkcaldy on Saturday, pipes playing, boots thudding, eyes left. They had just been granted the freedom of Fife, the region that provides the bulk of their recruits, and they were parading in front of the VIPs, who included their local MP, the Chancellor.

He may have noticed that they wore battledress, not kilts, and he may have wondered why. It was not because they are about to go back to Iraq — which they are — but because, since the amalgamation of the Scottish regiments, they are allowed to wear the red hackle, their most famous emblem, only when they are kitted out for patrol.

These days the Black Watch tartan and the battle honours that the regiment has accumulated over 300 years have been swapped for the dull uniformity of the newly formed Royal Regiment of Scotland, in which their identity has been buried. In their own minds, however, they remain, as proudly as ever, the Black Watch.

It is just possible that Mr Brown may have experienced the merest twinge of guilt as he watched the youth of his constituency marching past him. Not just because of the defence cuts that have deprived them of their identity; not just because an overstretched Army means they are having to return to Iraq far sooner than expected; nor because their pay is derisory, they are short of essential equipment and their wounded men are still not being treated in the dedicated hospital wing they have been promised for so long. The guilt, if it crossed the Chancellor’s mind at all, would have been about the weight of expectation that he and his Government have placed on the shoulders of these young men. And the near certainty that those expectations simply cannot be fulfilled.

Rarely, if ever, can British troops have been involved in an enterprise in which their own leaders have so little faith. Their Foreign Secretary admits that the military operation, of which they will be a part, may one day be seen as “a foreign policy disaster”. The Prime Minister’s closest former adviser on Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, describes the invasion as “a failure” and “a mess”. In America a senior State Department official speaks of the “arrogance” and “stupidity” of his Administration’s strategy. And, closer to home, their own commander, the head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, says that the presence of troops “exacerbates the security problems”, not only in Iraq but throughout the world.

I have no doubt that remarks such as this have done wonders for the morale of the insurgents. What I wanted to know, however, was what effect they had had on the men who were about to return to face the danger. What I found when I talked to some of them after the parade will not surprise those who know the Army well — it was that familiar blend of phlegmatic cynicism that has so often characterised the attitude of the British soldier. A shrug of the shoulders, a few references to “ doing the job” and one aside about the general saying out loud what a lot of them thought anyway. Not one expressed the slightest doubt about going back.

Last month, in Northern Ireland, where the regiment is currently based, they asked for volunteers for Iraq. More than twice the number came forward than there were slots to fill. I asked one of the soldiers, who had joined up at the age of 16 and who had already served in Iraq, whether he had ever regretted it. “No,” he said. “It’s my life. If I hadn’t been in the Army I’d have been in jail.”

Their attitude was much the same as the one more robustly put in the play Black Watch, by Gregory Burke, which was a smash hit at the Edinburgh Fringe and is about to tour the country. At one point a Black Watch sergeant explains to his men why they are in Iraq: “You’re here because Her Majesty’s Government has decided that there’s no way we can sit down in Basra brushing up on our Arabic and topping up our tans when our allies are getting ten types ay shite knocked out ay them by the Mujahidin. It’s our turn tay be in the shite. We’ve had three hundred years ay being in the shite. If you dinnay like shite, then you shouldnay have bothered f*****g joining.”

I doubt whether it will find its way into the training manuals, but it is as good a way of summing up the average attitude of the serving soldier as I have heard. Most of the officers and men of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, just back from Afghanistan, where they experienced fighting as intense as anything since the Korean War, spoke about the action as something they had been trained to expect.

“I wouldn’t turn the clock back,” said one. “One day I will tell my son about this as if it were a story.” Another said: “Morale drops when [a comrade] dies. You start thinking ‘the threat is here’. But when you see the Afghan eye to eye, the trust builds up.” That trust is not in the top brass, and certainly not in the politicians, but it is in the regiment, in their fellow soldiers, in the solidarity they form between them and in the training they have been given.

What they need in addition from their political leaders is some appreciation of the reality of war. They need the resources to do the job, the time to recover properly between tours of duty, the manpower to deploy in sufficient numbers and the back-up they need when the going gets tough.

Whether General Dannatt was right to speak out or not, one thing he said will resonate with every soldier out on patrol in Basra or Afghanistan: “Twenty-nine per cent of government spending is on social security. Five per cent is on defence. Others can take a view on whether that proportion is right.” Perhaps that was what went through Mr Brown’s mind in Kirkcaldy on Saturday.

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