Military Origin of ‘True Scotsman’ Tradition

[Regimental]

Again a post WW2 anecdote but my dad was an NCO who served in Highland regiments in the late 50's/60's. He talked about a highly polished piece of steel set into the ground in doorways to check whether underwear was being worn as soldiers passed through, which would make more sense than a mirror given the footwear worn back then. As always with old soldiers though, it's difficult to know if they are pulling your leg . Might be worth looking out for such a thing if you're wandering around an old barracks.

Yes, the thing that always make me doubt tales like this is that it feels like the sort of thing notable enough that somebody would have taken a picture of at some point, or written about it at the time, or where an example would have survived to the present day. I do have some suspicions there may be a bit of collective leg-pulling (or at least exaggeration) going on amongst some old soldiers! (Not that that necessarily means the tradition itself didn’t exist, of course – post war there seems plenty of evidence for that).