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Teenage soldier’s tragic efforts to save regimental colours remembered in Inverness

Members of the Royal Scots Association’s Highland branch and the Old High Church congregation with the memorial to Ensign James Kennedy
Members of the Royal Scots Association’s Highland branch and the Old High Church congregation with the memorial to Ensign James Kennedy

The life of a teenage soldier from Inverness who died during one of the last Napoleonic battles has been remembered during a poignant ceremony in the city.

Members of the Royal Scots Association’s Highland branch joined the Old High Church congregation to commemorate the life of Ensign James Kennedy.

Ensign Kennedy, a newly commissioned officer in the Royal Scots, was killed on June 16, 1815, three days after his 15th birthday.

When he died, he was serving with the regiment’s 3rd Battalion in a bloody encounter between the French and British at the strategic crossroads of Quatre Bras, two days before Waterloo.

Ensign Kennedy was carrying the King’s Colours in advance of the battalion at Quatre Bras. He was shot in the arm, but bravely carried on until shot again and fatally wounded.

A sergeant went to retrieve the colours, but the boy ensign was holding them so tightly that he could not break the lad’s grip.

The sergeant then picked up young Kennedy, carrying him over his shoulder with the colours still in the dead youth’s fist.

The French commander, on seeing this display of bravery, is said to have ordered his men to withhold their fire until the sergeant regained his own lines with his burden.

Four officers including Ensign Kennedy, and a sergeant major, were killed while carrying the King’s Colour during the two battles, in which 363 of the Royal Scots complement of 624 men were killed or wounded.

The teenager was the third son of Inverness physician Dr William Kennedy, first president of the Medical Society of the North, and one of the founders of the Royal Northern Infirmary and his name appears on his family memorial in the west stairwell of the Old High Church.

During a service on Sunday, branch chairman Pipe-Major Thomas Cornwall laid a wreath in the memorial area of the church in memory of the boy officer. It will be placed on the stairwell memorial after ongoing repairs to the church roof and ceiling have been completed.