The Border Regiment

34th and 55th

The regiment representing the historic region of Cumbria came into being in 1881 as a result of the amalgamation of two distinguished English border county regiments, the 34th (Cumberland) Foot and the 55th (Westmoreland) Foot. Its depot was housed in Carlisle Castle and its character was summed up admirably by the author George MacDonald Fraser who served in the 9th Battalion in Burma in 1944 and whose memoir, Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), is one of the best accounts of warfare as experienced by a section of infantrymen. Fraser, the creator of the hugely successful Flashman novels, characterised his fellow Cumbrian soldiers as ‘the descendant of one of the hardest breeds of men in Britain, with warfare (if not soldiering) bred into him from the distant past … in war they were England’s vanguard, and in peace her most unruly and bloody nuisance’. It tells us all we need to know about this no-nonsense regiment that its quick march was ‘D’ye ken John Peel’, the rousing anthem which celebrates the fox-hunting fraternity of the English Border country.

There is no finer example of Fraser’s claim about the toughness of Cumbrian soldiers than an incident in October 1811 when the 34th (Cumberland) Foot captured the drums of its opponents at the Battle of Arroyo dos Molinos during the Peninsula campaign against Napoleonic France. To add lustre to the event the six side drums and drum major’s staff captured by Sergeant Moses Simpson belonged to the French 34e Regiment and had been presented to them by Napoleon in 1796. This was a signal prize: not only were the 34th (Cumberland) Foot the only regiment to be awarded ‘Arroyo dos Molinos’ as a battle honour but on each anniversary the drums were paraded by the regiment and its successors. Among those present that day in 1811 was a young ensign from Dublin called George Bell who carried the 34th’s King’s Colour and who later wrote an entertaining account of his service from young officer to full general. It was his first battle and he never forgot the mixture of elation and fear as he and the colour party began their advance towards the French lines: ‘Away we went across the plain to be baptised in blood. Our skirmishers in advance had come across the French outlying pickets and had begun operations. A cannon-shot came rattling past, making a hissing noise, such as I had never heard before. Four sergeants supported the Colours in battle; my old friend [Sergeant] Bolland from Beverley was one of them. I said, “What’s that, Bolland?” “Only the morning gun, sir: they’re coming on them now.” A little onwards and I saw two men cut across by that last shot, the first that I had ever seen killed. I was horrified but said nothing.’

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Farewell parade for Berlin Infantry Brigade commander, March 1959 – men of 1st Battalion The Border Regiment march past. Six months later they amalgamated with The King’s Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster) to form The King’s Own Royal Border Regiment.

Bell’s regiment had been formed over a century earlier when it was raised in East Anglia in February 1702 as Lord Lucas’s Regiment of Foot, its founder being Lord Robert Lucas, Governor of the Tower of London.

Originally stationed at Chelmsford, Lucas’s Foot was sent north to Carlisle the following year, thereby beginning the lifelong connection between the regiment and the town and its castle. In 1751 it was numbered 34th and in 1782 it was given Cumberland as its territorial title with its depot in Carlisle. During that period it saw service in Europe, the West Indies and Canada, and as Cholmondeley’s Regiment it was present in the Duke of Cumberland’s army at the Battle of Culloden which ended the Jacobite rebellion of 1745-6. In the nineteenth century the regiment saw action in the wars against Napoleonic France in Europe and India and later in the Crimean War. In 1873 it shared its depot at Carlisle Castle with the 55th (Westmoreland) Foot which had been founded in Stirling in 1755. Raised originally as the 57th Foot it was renumbered two years later following the discovery of irregularities in two line regiments in North America (50th and 51st) leading to their disbandment.

The 55th had the distinction of being one of the few British regiments to have served in China and of having a Chinese dragon superscribed ‘China’ on its Regimental Colour. This came about in 1841 as a result of the Opium War, a conflict with China over the legalisation of the opium trade: the regiment was part of the invasion force and stayed on in the country as the garrison after the fighting died had down. A Chinese Imperial Dragon Standard flag captured by the 55th at the Battle of Tinghai is held at the Border Regiment Chapel in Kendal Parish Church, together with a pair of Regimental Colours used from 1786 to 1801. After amalgamation the 55th became the 2nd battalion of The Border Regiment and moved to India to replace the 1st Battalion (old 34th) which saw service in the Boer War (1899-1902).

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Men of a battalion of The Border Regiment resting in shallow dugouts near Thiepval Wood during the Battle of the Somme in August 1916.

In common with all British line infantry regiments The Border Regiment expanded during the First World War to absorb recruits from the North and North West and five men were awarded the Victoria Cross. The first two won the medal on the same day, 21 December 1914, and in the same action at Rouges Bancs near Armentières when James Alexander Smith and Abraham Acton, of the 2nd Battalion, left their trench to rescue a wounded comrade who had been left in no-man’s-land; later that day they repeated the feat to rescue another man, again under heavy enemy fire. Smith was thirty-three and came from Workington; Acton, a twenty-two-year old from Whitehaven, had been a coal miner before the war. Towards the end of the conflict the 2nd Battalion served on the Italian front and gained the battle honour ‘Vittoria Veneto’ after taking part in that hard-fought battle in 1918.

During the Second World War the 1st Battalion trained for air-landing operations and went into action in Waco gliders pulled by aircraft. The first operation took place during the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 but as Arthur Royall, a young officer who took part in the operation quickly discovered, this was a disastrous undertaking: ‘Of the 72 Waco gliders that carried men of The Border Regiment on Operation Ladbroke, one landed in Malta, seven in North Africa, 44 in the sea and only 23 in Sicily - and these were widely scattered. Only 11 officers and 191 ORs actually landed in Sicily.’ Before the operation Royall attended a brigade church service and remembered singing the hymn ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’ with the prophetic line ‘For those in peril on the sea’. In the following year the same battalion took part in the landings at Arnhem as part of the ill-fated Market Garden operation in September 1944, during which the battalion had a higher casualty rate of dead and wounded than any other in the 1st Airborne Division – only nine officers and 241 other ranks came back after nine days of hard fighting.

In 1959 The Border Regiment amalgamated with its neighbour The King’s Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster) to form The King’s Own Royal Border Regiment (KORBR). Raised in 1680 as the 2nd Tangier Regiment by the Earl of Plymouth, it became The 4th (King’s Own) Regiment in 1751. The territorial connection with Lancaster followed at the time of the Cardwell/Childers reforms and the regimental depot was based at Bowerham Barracks in Lancaster with a recruiting area which ranged from Fleetwood in the south to Barrow-in-Furness in the west and Coniston in the north. On amalgamation with The Border Regiment, Bowerham Barracks were vacated and became the Lancaster Training College (Church of England), and later, the College of St Martin within the University of Cumbria. In 2006 the KORBR amalgamated with The King’s Regiment and The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment to form The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment (King’s, Lancashire and Border).

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Battle Honours

Pre-1914

Carried on the Regimental Colour

Albuhera, Arroyo dos Molinos, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, Peninsula, China, Alma, Inkerman, Sevastopol, Lucknow, The Relief of Ladysmith 1900, South Africa 1899–1902

First World War (17 battalions)

Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour

Ypres 1914, 15, 17, 18, Langemarck 1914, 17, Gheluvelt, Neuve Chapelle, Frezenberg, Bellewaarde, Aubers, Festubert 1915, Loos, Somme 1916, 18, Albert 1916, 18, Bazentin, Delville Wood, Pozieres, Guillemont, Flers-Courcelette, Morval, Thiepval, Le Transloy, Ancre Heights, Ancre 1916, Arras 1917, 18, Scarpe 1917, Bullecourt, Messines 1917, 18 Pilckem, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcapelle, Passchendaele, Cambrai 1917, 18, St Quentin, Rosieres, Lys, Estaires, Hazebrouck, Bailleul, Kemmel, Scherpeneberg, Aisne 1918, Amiens, Bapaume 1918, Hindenburg Line, Epehey, St Quentin Canal, Beuarevoir, Courtrai, Selle, France and Flanders 1914–18, Piave, Vittorio Veneto, Italy 1917–18, Macedonia 1915–18, Helles, Landing at Helles, Krithia, Suvla, Landing at Suvla, Scimitar Hill, Gallipoli 1916–16, Egypt 1916, N.W. Frontier India 1916–17

Post-1918

Carried on the Regimental Colour

Afghanistan 1919

Second World War

Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour

Defence of Escaut, Dunkirk 1940, Somme 1940, Arnhem 1944, North-West Europe 1940, Tobruk 1941, Landing in Sicily, Imphal, Sakawng, Tamu Road, Shenam Pass, Kohima, Ukhrul, Mandalay, Myinmu Bridgehead, Meiktila, Rangoon Road, Prawbwe, Sittang 1945, Chindits 1944, Burma 1943–45

Recipients of the Victoria Cross

Private John Joseph Sims, 34th Regiment, Crimean War, 1855

Private (later Sergeant) William Coffey, 34th Regiment, Indian Mutiny, 1857

Brevet Major Frederic Cockayne Elton, 55th Regiment, Indian Mutiny, 1857

Private (later Sergeant) George Richardson, 34th Regiment, Indian Mutiny, 1859

Private James Alexander Smith, 2nd Battalion, First World War, 1914

Private Abraham Acton, 2nd Battalion, First World War, 1914

Sergeant Edward John Mott, 1st Battalion, First World War, 1917

Sergeant Charles Edward Spackman, 1st Battalion, First World War, 1917

Captain (Acting Lieutenant Colonel) James Forbes-Robertson 1st Battalion, First World War, 1918