Group of officers and the Colour Party of 1st Battalion The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, 1896.
The only line infantry regiment ever to have been named after a commoner, The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment also enjoyed close links with the West Riding of Yorkshire. Its depot was situated in Halifax, at Wellesley Barracks in High Road Well, which were vacated in 1959, and the regiment’s traditional nickname was ‘The Havercake Lads’, the havercake being the traditional Yorkshire oat (hafer) cake. A further link with the area was provided by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Akroyd, a local textile manufacturer and a wealthy philanthropist who also commanded the 4th Yorkshire West Riding (Halifax) Rifle Volunteers, which in 1908 became the regiment’s Territorial Force battalion. Akroyd died in 1887 after falling from his horse and sustaining severe head injuries but his influence upon the regiment lived on. In 1961 his mansion at Bankfield in Boothtown Road, Halifax, housed the regimental museum which had previously been situated in the old barracks. It was refurbished and extended in 2005.
The regiment was raised in 1702 by Colonel George Hastings, 8th Earl of Huntingdon, who held the first muster near the city of Gloucester at the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession. It was immediately in action in continental Europe and was one of six regiments sent to Portugal to help Britain’s main ally but it enjoyed mixed fortunes, being almost decimated at the Battle of Almansa in 1707. Re-raised, it took part in the subsequent War of the Austrian Succession where it gained its first battle honour at Dettingen in 1743 and at Roucoux, three years later, it came to public prominence, the London Gazette noting that the 33rd Regiment petitioned to attack the enemy and ‘did it with so good a countenance that they got a great reputation’. In 1751 the regiment was numbered 33rd in the Army’s Order of Precedence and in 1782 it was granted the recruiting area of Yorkshire’s West Riding after its Colonel, Lord Cornwallis, informed the War Office that ‘the 33rd Regiment of Infantry has always recruited in the West Riding of Yorkshire and has a very good interest and the general goodwill of the people in that part of the county’.
Although it would not have been evident at the time, the most significant change to the 33rd’s fortunes came in April 1793 when a young officer, the Hon. Arthur Wellesley, third son of the Earl of Mornington, purchased a major’s commission at a cost of £2,600, a sum that would today be worth around £241,900. Four months later he was in command with the rank of lieutenant colonel. With the war against Revolutionary France in full swing there was chance for further advancement and when the 33rd was deployed to India in 1797 Wellesley was determined to make the most of the opportunity, leading them to victory at the Battle of Seringapatam in 1799 in which the forces of Tipu Sultan were defeated. The commanding officer showed that he had his men’s interests at heart. He permitted the habit of taking Indian mistresses and made sure that the women underwent medical examination, and while he ordered that drunken soldiers be punished he also smiled on officers who drank too heavily, believing that ‘the most correct and cautious men were liable to be led astray by convivial society, and no blame ought to attach to an occasional debauch’. Although Wellesley’s attachment to the regiment was interrupted by his promotion and return to Britain in 1806, commanding officer and regiment were reunited nine years later when the 33rd formed part of the 5th Brigade in the campaign to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo, masterminded by the Duke of Wellington, as Wellesley had now been created. Thirty-eight years later, on 18 June 1853, following Wellington’s death the previous year, Queen Victoria ordered that the regiment’s title be changed to The 33rd (The Duke of Wellington’s) Regiment in recognition of its long relationship with the great soldier.
By contrast the 76th Regiment of Foot had a more variegated background. It was raised in 1745 at the time of the Jacobite rebellion but was disbanded a year later. Raised again in 1756 at the time of the Seven Years War, it later served in North America as Macdonald’s Highlanders before being sent to India in 1787 for service with the Honourable East India Company. For its services George III granted the regiment permission to use the word ‘Hindoostan’ on its Colours together with an elephant and howdah on its cap badge. The regiment returned to Britain in 1806 and seventy years later shared a depot in Halifax with the 33rd, thus beginning its relationship with the West Riding of Yorkshire. Among its more remarkable officers was John Shipp who was commissioned from the ranks in 1805 but was forced to resign due to lack of funds when the regiment returned to Britain. Nothing daunted, he turned to writing and his Memoirs, published in 1827, provide a vivid account of soldiering in the army of the day. He also wrote a treatise against corporal punishment which he argued ‘flogged one devil out and fifty devils in’. Many of his suggestions for improvement were adopted by the military authorities.
As a fighting regiment ‘The Dukes’ (as they quickly became known) had a reputation second to none – it saw action in the Crimea and the Boer War – but it also gained a different kind of fame as one of the army’s finest rugby-playing regiments. This began with the 2nd Battalion (the old 76th) which fostered close links with rugby playing schools in Yorkshire and won the first Army Rugby Cup in 1907. Thereafter the regiment won the Army Cup fourteen times and in the 1960s it won the trophy four years in a row. During that sporting heyday the Dukes also produced a number of players who represented their countries at rugby – seven Englishmen, three Scots and one Irishman. Perhaps the best known was M. J. Campbell-Lamerton of Scotland who toured with the British and Irish Lions to South Africa in 1962 and captained them in the following tour to Australia and New Zealand in 1966. The other great Dukes’ players were D. W. Shuttleworth and E. M. P. Harding who provided England’s half-back partnership in 1951; later, in the rank of brigadier, Shuttleworth was President of the Rugby Football Union during the 1985–86 season.
In common with other regiments the Dukes also profited from the presence of rugby-playing National Servicemen and this also extended to active service. In the period 1952–53 the Dukes were deployed to Korea and took part in the Third Battle of the Hook on the night of 28 May, generally considered to be one of the bloodiest actions of the conflict. It was preceded by a massive Chinese artillery assault and during the following forty-eight hours the Dukes’ resistance kept the Hook position secure for the UN forces; even against numerically superior odds, their stoicism and devotion to duty won the day in what was probably the last full-scale defensive infantry battle involving artillery fought by the British Army. Among the Dukes defending the position was nineteen-year-old National Serviceman Lance Corporal Bob Dawson. His recollections are held by the regimental museum: ‘The hill we defended was like a lunar landscape, every 5ft trench destroyed and half of the firing pits. As we went to what was left of our hoochies [improvised tarpaulin shelter] at the back of the hill and started to clean our weapons, Major [A. B. M.] Kavanagh came round and said “You are only boys, I hope you never have to go through that again.” There were tears in his eyes.’ Almost a year later Dawson was back in Yorkshire and demobbed from the army. Not surprisingly he admitted that when he got home he ‘felt a complete stranger and it took a long time to settle down’.
Smiling soldiers of a battalion of The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment at the entrance of the shelters they had erected whilst waiting in reserve during the First World War.
Following the 2004 defence review the Dukes became the 3rd Battalion of The Yorkshire Regiment which was formed by The Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire (14th and 15th), The Green Howards (19th) and The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment.
Hindoostan, Mysore, Seringapatam, Ally Ghur, Delhi 1803, Leswaree, Deig, Corunna, Nive, Peninsular, Waterloo, Alma, Inkerman, Sevastopol, Abyssinia, Relief of Kimberley, Paardeberg, South Africa 1900–02
Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour
Mons, Le Cateau, Retreat from Mons, Marne 1914, 18, Aisne 1914, La Bassée 1914, Ypres 1914, 15, 17, Nonne Bosschen, Hill 60, Gravenstafel, St. Julien, Aubers, Somme 1916, 18, Albert 1916 and 1918, Bazentin, Delville Wood, Pozières, Flers-Courcelette, Morval, Thiepval, Le Transloy, Ancre Heights, Arras 1917, 18, Scarpe 1917, 18, Arleux, Bullecourt, Messines 1917, 18, Langemarck 1917, Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcappelle, Passchendaele, Cambrai 1917, 18, St Quentin, Ancre 1918, Lys, Estaires, Hazebrouck, Bailleul, Kemmel, Bethune, Scherpenberg, Tardenois, Amiens, Bapaume 1918, Drocourt-Quéant, Hindenburg Line, Havrincourt, Èpehy, Canal du Nord, Selle, Valenciennes, Sambre, France and Flanders 1914–18, Piave, Vittorio Veneto, Italy 1917–18, Suvla, Landing at Suvla, Scimitar Hill, Gallipoli 1915, Egypt 1916
Carried on the Regimental Colour
Afghanistan 1919
Dunkirk, St Valery-en-Caux, Tilly sur Seulles, Odon, Fontenay Le Pesnil, North-West Europe 1940, 44–45, Banana Ridge, Medjez Plain, Gueriat el Atach Ridge, Tunis, Djebel Bou Aoukaz 1943, North Africa 1943, Anzio, Campoleone, Rome, Monte Ceco, Italy 1943–45, Sittang 1942, Paungde, Kohima, Chindits 1944, Burma 1942–44
Carried on the Regimental Colour
The Hook 1953, Korea 1952–53, Iraq 2003
Drummer (later Corporal) Michael Magner, 33rd Regiment, Abyssinia, 1868
Private James Bergin, 33rd Regiment, Abyssinia, 1868
Sergeant James Firth, 1st Battalion, Boer War, 1900
2nd Lieutenant Henry Kelly, 10th Battalion, First World War, 1916
Private Arnold Loosemore, 8th Battalion, First World War, 1917
2nd Lieutenant James Huffam, 5th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Private Arthur Poulter, 1/4th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Private Henry Tandey, 5th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Private Richard Henry Burton, 1st Battalion, Second World War, 1944
