The Gordon Highlanders was one of the great names of Scotland's history, and one of the British Army's most celebrated regiments. It was the local regiment of the North East of Scotland, recruiting mainly from Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and Kincardineshire, an area which took great pride in the Regiment's record.

The Gordon Highlanders was raised in 1794 by the 4th Duke of Gordon, as a regiment of Highland Foot (infantry). Many of the original recruits were drawn from the Gordon estates, and the recruiting effort was assisted by the Duchess of Gordon, who is said to have offered a kiss as an incentive to join up. Always known as the Gordon Highlanders, the Regiment was officially designated the 100th Regiment of Foot, becoming in 1798 the 92nd Regiment of Foot, the numbering with which it has since been associated.

The Gordons were originally brought into being during the French Revolutionary Wars. They saw action against the armies of France, first at Egmont-op-Zee in Holland in 1799, then in the Egypt expedition of 1801, and again in the long campaigns and many battles of the Peninsular War in Spain. The Regiment then played a prominent role in the final defeat of Napoleon at Quatre Bras and Waterloo in 1815.

As the nineteenth century progressed, the expansion of the British Empire saw the Gordons serve in far flung locations on the frontiers of India, in Egypt and the Sudan and in South Africa. Among many famous actions were the extraordinary feat of the march over 320 miles of Afghanistan's unforgiving terrain between Kabul and Kandahar, achieved in 23 days in 1880. Also, the stunning victory on the heights of Dargai, on India's North West Frontier, in 1897.

During the 1880's, the old 75th (Stirlingshire) Regiment, with its own record of war service in India, was incorporated into the Gordons, which had then established a permanent presence in Aberdeen. Meantime, the gradual development of local volunteer and militia units into the Territorial Army gave the Regiment a truly local character.

In the First World War some 50,000 Gordons served in the regular, territorial and service battalions. Of these, approximately 27,000 were killed or wounded. Among other great and terrible battles, all the fighting Gordon battalions saw action on the Somme.

In the Second World War, Gordon battalions served with the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940, and in the Far East in 1942, where many became prisoners of war. Great success was achieved in the North Africa campaign, in Sicily and Italy, in the invasion of North West Europe followed by the long advance into Germany, and in the liberation of Burma.

In the years after 1945, the Regiment took part in peace-keeping and anti-terrorist operations in Malaya, Borneo, Cyprus, Germany and Northern Ireland, with detachments serving in the Gulf War and Bosnia. In 1994, the Regiment was amalgamated to become part of the Highlanders (Seaforth, Gordons and Camerons) - the new regiment of the north of Scotland.