Soldiers of the Essex Regiment ferried across the River Vaal in South Africa during the Boer War 1899–1902. Both the 1st and 2nd Battalions saw action during the conflict.
If one painting sums up the selfless heroism and devotion to duty which underpinned Queen Victoria’s army it is William Barnes Wollen’s ‘The Last Stand of the 44th Regiment at Gundamuck’. Although it is a sanitised and highly romanticised interpretation of one of the worst disasters to befall a British army during the First Afghan War (1839-42), it remains a heroic vision of how soldiers will behave in extremis and when they have only their courage and pride in regiment to sustain them. The bare facts speak for themselves. In 1839 British and Indian forces had invaded Afghanistan and effected a regime change in order to protect British interests in the region but within three years had been forced to withdraw. During the retreat back to India from Kabul through the snowbound passes, most of the 16,500-strong force was massacred, leaving the depleted 44th (East Essex) Foot to make a last stand on a rocky hill near the village of Gandamak. Only sixty-five men of Essex remained in position in their small defensive square; they had little ammunition and were exhausted and freezing but national pride was at stake. When the Afghans called on them to surrender a sergeant’s voice was heard crying out, ‘Not bloody likely!’ Only two men survived – Captain Thomas Souter, who wrapped the Regimental Colour around him before being taken prisoner, and Surgeon William Brydon, who managed to ride back to India with news of the disaster. Wollen’s painting now hangs in the Chelmsford and Essex Museum in Oaklands Park, London Road, Chelmsford.
Gandamak was not the first time the Essex infantrymen had been annihilated in battle; to the 44th belongs the unhappy statistic of being wiped out on three different occasions during its first hundred years of service to the Crown. The regiment was one of seven raised in 1741 to fight in the War of the Austrian Succession and it was originally known as Long’s Regiment after its first Colonel, James Long of the Grenadier Guards. Four years later, as Lee’s Regiment, its new Colonel being John Lee, it was part of the government army which faced rebel Jacobite forces at Prestonpans outside Edinburgh on 21 September 1745. Unable to withstand the ferocity of the Highlanders’ charge, the government infantry broke and fled from the field only to be savagely cut down by the pursuing clansmen. Among those killed were the men of Lee’s Regiment.
Almost ten years later, on 9 July 1755, the same regiment, by then numbered the 44th, was massacred by French and Native Americans while serving under Major General Edward Braddock in North America. During the fighting on the Monongahela River in modern western Pennsylvania, sixty-three British and American officers were killed and wounded while the casualties among the NCOs and men were 914, many of them from the 44th. Undaunted by their experience the regiment re-formed and served in North America throughout the War of Independence, seeing action at the battles of Brooklyn (1776), Brandywine (1777) and Monmouth (1778). As if to compensate for its earlier setbacks the 44th gained great glory during the Peninsular War when its newly raised 2nd Battalion captured a French imperial eagle – the equivalent of a British regiment’s Colours – at the Battle of Salamanca which was fought on 22 July 1812. It was one of only five such eagles to be captured and the deed earned the 2nd Battalion the nickname ‘the little fighting fours’.
Soldiers of the Essex Regiment ferried across the River Vaal in South Africa during the Boer War 1899–1902. Both the 1st and 2nd Battalions saw action during the conflict.
In 1881 as part of the reform of the infantry system the 44th amalgamated with the 56th (West Essex) Foot to form The Essex Regiment with its depot and headquarters at Warley, now a suburb of Brentwood. Little remains of the site, which was developed by the Ford Motor Company as its British headquarters; the only vestiges are the officers’ mess (now the Marillac Nursing Home) and one of the regimental gyms (Keys Hall). However, the area is still home to the handsome Essex Regimental Chapel in Eagle Way (built in 1857) and contains many historical artefacts, including the regiment’s Colours. On amalgamation with the 56th Foot the new regiment adopted its nickname ‘The Pompadours’, a reference to its purple facings which were changed from deep red in 1764. Why the colour was so called remains a mystery; it has been claimed that purple was the favourite colour of Louis XV’s mistress and confidante Madame de Pompadour, but within the regiment itself soldiers preferred to say that the nickname came from the colour of her underwear. A more reliable tradition was the use of ‘Rule, Britannia!’ as The Essex Regiment’s quick march to commemorate the 56th’s service as marines on board the frigates HMS Psyche and HMS Piedmontaise between 1809 and 1810.
During the First World War the regiment raised thirty-one battalions, eleven of which saw action on that conflict’s main battlefronts. However, the regiment was closely associated with the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in 1915, providing the invasion force with not only the 1st Battalion in the ‘Immortal’ 29th Division but also four Territorial battalions which served together in the 161st Essex Brigade. First into action was 1st Essex which landed at W Beach on 25 April and suffered heavy casualties as it attacked Turkish positions on Hill 138 supported by 4th Worcester Regiment. Among the hundred or so casualties that day was Private John Edwin Barnes, a regular who was typical of the pre-war infantry soldier who joined up out of a sense of adventure and to break the tedium of civilian life in England. Born in Poplar in 1890, he enlisted at eighteen and served with 2nd Essex in Dublin before being posted to India to serve with the 1st Battalion. At the other end of the scale is the well-attested case of a Private Stacey from Warley who enlisted in The Essex Regiment in 1902 at the age of only fifteen. After discovering that his kit had been stolen and sold off while he was on leave (a common occurrence) Stacey deserted and walked from Warley to Reading where he enlisted in The Berkshire Regiment under the name Charles Cotton. When his cover was about to be broken by the appearance of two other men from The Essex Regiment he deserted once again and rejoined the army at Aldershot where he enlisted in The King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Five months later he was on the move again, enlisting in The Royal West Kent Regiment at Gravesend, again under an assumed name.
Soldiers of the Essex Regiment recuperating at Queen Mary’s Orthopaedic Hospital, Roehampton, London, a specialised orthopaedic hospital established during the First World War. One of a series of contemporary postcards.
Following the failure of the Gallipoli campaign at the end of 1915 the regiment’s four Territorial battalions (4th, 5th, 6th and 7th) served in Egypt and Palestine but the 1st Battalion returned with the 29th Division to France where it saw service on the Western Front and was in action on the first day of the Somme, 1 July 1916, at Beaumont-Hamel. Its task was to support The Newfoundland Regiment as it went into the attack shortly after nine o’clock in the morning, only to suffer some 710 casualties in the resulting firestorm. Two hours later 1st Essex began its attack but it quickly became bogged down in no-man’s-land, leaving the commanding officer with no option but to inform brigade headquarters that the battalion had to withdraw ‘owing to casualties and disorganisation’. On the Thiepval Memorial, which commemorates the dead of the Somme, are the names of 949 officers and men of The Essex Regiment who have no known grave.
During the Second World War Essex battalions served in Europe and Burma but the regiment did not long survive the peace. In 1958 it amalgamated with The Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment to form the 3rd Battalion of The East Anglian Regiment, which became The Royal Anglian Regiment in 1964. In 1992 the 3rd Battalion was disbanded but the Essex connection is maintained by the Corps of Drums at King Edward VI Grammar School at Chelmsford, which uses the drums of the old 4th/5th Battalion and wears scarlet tunics with Pompadour purple facings.
Egypt, Moro, Gibraltar 1779–83, Badajoz, Salamanca, Peninsula, Bladensburg, Waterloo, Ava, Alma, Inkerman, Sevastopol, Taku Forts, Havannah, Nile 1884–85, Relief of Kimberley, Paardeberg, South Africa 1899–1902
Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour
Le Cateau, Retreat from Mons, Marne 1914, Aisne 1914, Messines 1914, Armentières 1914, Ypres 1915, 17, St. Julien, Frezenberg, Bellewaarde, Loos, Somme 1916, 18, Albert 1916, 18, Bazentin, Delville Wood, Pozières, Flers-Courcelette, Morval, Thiepval, Le Transloy, Ancre Heights, Ancre 1916, 18, Bapaume 1917, 18, Arras 1917, 18, Scarpe 1917, 18, Arleux, Pilckem, Langemarck 1917, Menin Road, Broodseinde, Poelcappelle, Passchendaele, Cambrai 1917, 18, St. Quentin, Avre, Villers Bretonneux, Lys, Hazebrouck, Béthune, Amiens, Drocourt-Quéant, Hindenburg Line, Havrincourt, Èpéhy, St. Quentin Canal, Selle, Sambre, France and Flanders 1914–18, Helles, Landing at Helles, Krithia, Suvla, Landing at Suvla, Scimitar Hill, Gallipoli 1915–16, Rumani, Egypt 1915–17, Gaza, Jaffa, Megiddo, Sharon, Palestine 1917–18
Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour
St. Omer-La Bassée, Tilly sur Seulles, Le Havre, Antwerp-Turnhout Canal, Scheldt, Zetten, Arnhem 1945, North-West Europe 1940, 44–45, Abyssinia 1940, Falluja, Baghdad 1941, Iraq 1941, Palmyra, Syria 1941, Tobruk 1941, Belhamed, Mersa Matruh, Defence of Alamein Line, Deir el Shein, Ruweisat, Ruweisat Ridge, El Alamein, Matmata Hills, Akarit, Enfidaville, Djebel Garci, Tunis, Ragoubet Souissi, North Africa 1941–43, Trigno, Sangro, Villa Grande, Cassino I, Castle Hill, Hangman’s Hill, Italy 1943–44, Athens, Greece 1944–45, Kohima, Chindits 1944, Burma 1943–45
Sergeant William McWheeney, 44th Regiment, Crimean War, 1854
Private (later Sergeant) John McDougall, 44th Regiment, Second Opium War 1860
Lieutenant (later Major General) Robert Montresor Rogers, 44th Regiment, Second Opium War, 1860
Lieutenant Francis Newton Parsons, 1st Battalion, Boer War, 1900
2nd Lieutenant Frank Bernard Wearne, 11th Battalion, First World War, 1917
Lieutenant Colonel Augustus Charles Newman, The Essex Regiment, attached 2 Commando, Second World War, 1942
