For many years, India, the ‘Jewel in the Crown’, was a second home for the British Army. During the period of the British Raj, which lasted from the end of the Indian Mutiny in 1857 to independence in 1947, when the subcontinent was partitioned and the new state of Pakistan came into being, hundreds of thousands of British soldiers served in India as part of the resident garrison. It was fitting therefore that the last British infantry regiment to leave India should be 1st Battalion The Somerset Light Infantry, which was not only one of the oldest regiments in the British Army but could look back on a long history of service on the subcontinent. On 28 February 1948, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Platt, who had joined the Somersets in 1926, the battalion paraded for the last time in India, marching proudly on to the Apollo Bunder in Bombay before embarking on the troopship SS Empress of Australia which lay offshore in the Bombay roads. It was an impressive occasion with the Colour Party marching on to the Regimental March played by the band of the Royal Indian Engineers while guards from other Indian regiments and the Royal Indian Navy stood smartly to attention. Speeches were made and Platt was presented with a large silver model of the Gateway of India, the huge triumphal arch which dominates Bombay’s harbour area.
The Colour Party of 1st Battalion The Somerset Light Infantry marches down the steps of the Apollo Bunder in Bombay on 28 February 1948, before embarking on the troopship Empress of Australia. They were the last troops to leave newly independent India.
Then it was all over. To the strains of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ the escorts trooped the Colours down the centre of the parade and through the Gateway of India to the waiting launches. Above them, still in their positions, the bands of the Indian Army continued to play ‘Auld Lang Syne’: incongruously, the chorus was taken up by thousands of Indian voices as the Empress of Australia slipped her anchor and headed for the open sea. After 126 years The Somerset Light Infantry was finally coming home. When the battalion arrived back at Jellalabad Barracks, the depot in Taunton, the welcome was equally enthusiastic as the people of Somerset hailed their local regiment. Built between 1879 and 1881, Jellalabad Barracks remained in existence until the 1980s when much of it was demolished. Only the brick-built keep remains behind the open spaces of Vivary Park on land that was formerly a medieval fish farm, or vivarium, for nearby Taunton Priory and Taunton Castle.
Whatever else the passing of time has done to the old barrack buildings it cannot efface the memory of the long historical relationship that grew up between Somerset and Jalalabad, the second largest city in eastern Afghanistan, not far from the border with Pakistan. The walled city has been central to the history of The Somerset Light Infantry since 1822 when it was designated a Light Infantry regiment – by that stage the regiment had been numbered 13th and given the territorial designation of Somersetshire. That same year it moved to Chatham in preparation for a twenty-three-year-long deployment to India. It arrived in Calcutta in the summer of 1823 but was quickly embroiled in fighting in neighbouring Burma where it came under the command of Lieutenant Colonel (later General Sir) Robert Sale, a veteran of Seringapatam, a ferocious disciplinarian but loved by his men for his courage in leading from the front. The conflict, which came to be known as the First Anglo-Burmese War, culminated with the capture of Rangoon in 1826 in which the 13th played a leading role.
At the conclusion of hostilities the regiment returned to garrison duty in India, but before long they were in action again and once more under Sale’s command. In the winter of 1839 the British sent an army into Afghanistan to remove Amir Dost Mohammed and to replace him with a British puppet ruler. Sale commanded the 1st Bengal Brigade, which included the 13th, and the force quickly marched into Kandahar without meeting any significant resistance. The regiment took part in the Battle of Ghazni in July 1839, which allowed Shah Shujah to be installed as Afghanistan’s ruler, but the victory was not decisive; forces loyal to Dost Mohammed regrouped and in 1841 the British were obliged to withdraw. Under Sale’s command the 13th made its way to the fortified town of Jalalabad, which was put under siege. To encourage other survivors from the retreat to join them the 13th flew their Colours from the ramparts as a sign that they were still holding out and were prepared to resist. Sale’s wife Florentia was no less thick skinned: the soldiers called her ‘the grenadier in petticoats’ and at one stage she taunted her husband’s men for running away ‘like a flock of sheep with a wolf at their heels’. After five months of inaction Sale decided to break out: he took the fight to the besieging forces, which quickly disengaged and fled to Kabul.
Princess Margaret Rose inspects a guard of honour of the 4th Battalion Somerset Light Infantry at the Bath Festival on 1 May 1948.
The defence of Jalalabad was the making of the men of the 13th Somersetshire Light Infantry, which returned to India as the heroes of the hour, the only regiment to give a good account of itself and to survive in what had been a disastrous setback for the British and Indian armies. In a letter to his parents, Ensign C. G. C. Stapleton reported that ‘every regiment in Hindustan shall on our march down, turn out and present arms to us in review order’. Back in London, Queen Victoria was so impressed that she ordered that the regiment should bear the additional title ‘Prince Albert’s’ and to honour its courage in Afghanistan she directed that a new cap badge be issued depicting the walls of the besieged town with the word ‘Jellalabad’ superscribed on the existing Light Infantry bugle horn.
It was all a far cry from the regiment’s beginnings. It was raised in 1685 by Theophilus Hastings, 7th Earl of Huntingdon, who was one of the most prominent aristocratic supporters of the House of Stuart, having earlier been a bitter opponent. On the arrival of the Dutch fleet bringing William of Orange to England he marched his regiment down to Plymouth hoping to hold the citadel for James II. Instead, he was arrested, and although he was later freed rumours persisted that he was involved in Jacobite plots to return the Stuarts to the throne. Ironically, Huntingdon’s regiment quickly transferred its loyalty to the House of Orange and it was involved in suppressing Jacobite rebellions in Scotland and Ireland, fighting at Killiecrankie in Scotland in 1689 and at the Boyne in Ireland the following year. As if that were not sufficient proof of the regiment’s loyalty to the Crown, in 1746 it also fought in the Duke of Cumberland’s army at the Battle of Culloden where it served under the title Pulteney’s Regiment of Foot after Major General Harry Pulteney, Member of Parliament for Hedon in Yorkshire. The regimental history dryly noted that the day of the battle began with Prince Charles Edward Stuart being ‘an imaginary monarch’ and ended with him being ‘a destitute fugitive’. Although the battle was a decisive victory for the British government and ended the Jacobite challenge once and for all, Culloden was never awarded as a battle honour to any of the regiments which took part in it.
The Somersets gave loyal service to thirteen monarchs; in addition to periods spent in India it also served in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, South Africa, Malaya and in both world wars. In 1959 the regiment amalgamated with The Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry (32nd and 46th) to form The Somerset and Cornwall Light Infantry and in 1968 this became 1st Battalion of the newly formed Light Infantry. Later still, in 2007, its history and traditions were incorporated into The Rifles, a new large regiment representing the army’s light infantry and rifle traditions. The Somerset’s regimental museum is situated in the Somerset Military Museum, which is a part of the Museum of Somerset at Taunton Castle.
Gibraltar 1704–5, Dettingen, Martinique 1809, Ava, Ghuznee 1839, Afghanistan 1839, Cabool 1842, Sevastopol, South Africa 1878–9, Burmah 1885–87, Relief of Ladysmith, South Africa 1899–1902
Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour
Le Cateau, Retreat from Mons, Marne 1914, 18, Aisne 1914, Armentières 1914, Ypres 1915, 17, 18, St. Julien, Frezenberg, Bellewaarde, Hooge 1915, Loos, Mount Sorrel, Somme 1916, 18, Albert 1916,18, Delville Wood, Guillemont, Flers-Courcelette, Morval, Le Transloy, Ancre 1916, 18, Arras 1917, 18, Vimy 1917, Scarpe 1917, 18, Arleux, Langemarck 1917, Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcappelle, Passchendaele, Cambrai 1917, 18, St. Quentin, Bapaume 1918, Rosières, Avre, Lys, Hazebrouck, Béthune, Soissonais-Ourq, Drocourt-Quéant, Hindenburg Line, Havrincourt, Èpehy, Canal du Nord, Courtrai, Selle, Valenciennes, Sambre, France and Flanders 1914–18, Gaza, El Mughar, Nebi Samwil, Jerusalem, Megiddo, Sharon, Palestine 1917, 18, Tigris 1916, Sharqat, Mesopotamia 1916–18, N.W. Frontier India 1915
Carried on the Regimental Colour
Afghanistan 1919
Odon, Caen, Hill 112, Mont Pincon, Noireau Crossing, Seine 1944, Nederrijn, Geilenkirchen, Roer, Rhineland, Cleve, Goch, Hochwald, Xanten, Rhine, Bremen, North-West Europe 1944–45, Cassino II, Trasimene Line, Arezzo, Advance to Florence, Capture of Forli, Cosina Canal Crossing, Italy 1944–45, Athens, Greece 1944–45, North Arakan, Buthidaung, Ngakyedauk Pass, Burma 1943–44
Sergeant William Napier, 13th Regiment, Indian Mutiny, 1857
Private Patrick Carlin, 13th Regiment, Indian Mutiny, 1858
Major (later Colonel) William Knox Leet, 13th Regiment, Zulu War, 1879
Private Thomas Henry Sage, 8th Battalion, First World War, 1917
Lieutenant George Albert Cairns, The Somerset Light Infantry, attached 1st South Staffordshire Regiment, Second World War, 1944
