The Middlesex Regiment gained an enviable nickname when one of its antecedents, the 57th (West Middlesex) Foot, went into battle at Albuera in Spain on 16 May 1811 during the Peninsula campaign against Napoleonic France. In the course of a determined French attack on the British lines its commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel William Inglis, was shot from his horse and lay badly wounded in front of his men. Despite the severity of his injuries he refused to be carried to the rear and instead continued to shout encouragement to his beleaguered men, exhorting them with words that were to become famous: ‘Die hard, the 57th, die hard!’ The casualties in the 57th were 422 out of the 570 men in the ranks and 20 out of the 30 officers but the line held and, astonishingly, Inglis survived his wounds. As a result the regiment was nicknamed ‘The Die-Hards’.
Raised in 1741, the 57th had a close association with the county of Middlesex, which supplied it with most of its recruits, and throughout its existence the regiment maintained its depot and headquarters in Mill Hill, now part of the London Borough of Barnet. In 1909 new barracks named after Colonel Inglis were built on ground at Brittacy Farm and were occupied by the regiment until 1962. For a time the buildings were used by the army’s postal services and in 1988 the Provisional IRA attacked the barracks, killing one soldier in a bomb blast. Over the years most of the land was sold off for private housing development and all that remains of the military presence is Mill Hill East Station, which was expanded in 1941 to cater for the barracks in wartime.
Officers and men of 1st Battalion The Middlesex Regiment on the dockside in Hong Kong following their operational service in Korea, August 1951. Together with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders the regiment had been the first British forces to take part in the war.
In 1881 the 57th was amalgamated with the 77th (East Middlesex) Foot, the Duke of Cambridge’s Own, to form The Middlesex Regiment with two (later four) Regular battalions, two Militia battalions and four Volunteer battalions composed of part-time soldiers from the local community. In 1908, with the formation of the Territorial Force (later Territorial Army), the volunteer battalions became the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Battalions. The regimental Colonel-in-Chief was Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, the army’s commander-in-chief and cousin of Queen Victoria, who had a reputation as a traditionalist. He once offered a stinging rebuke to a subordinate with intellectual pretensions: ‘Brains? I don’t believe in brains! You haven’t any, I know, sir!’
Both the 57th and the 77th had seen service all over the Empire and both were involved in the Crimean War of 1854-56 where three soldiers were awarded the newly introduced Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery – Sergeant John Park of the 77th, during the battles of the Alma and Inkerman, Sergeant George Gardiner of the 57th and Private Alexander Wright of the 77th, both during the siege of Sevastopol. However, it was during the First World War that the men of Middlesex really showed their mettle.
The regiment was one of five in the British Army that had four Regular battalions before the outbreak of the conflict in August 1914; it also had two Special Reserve battalions (5th and 6th) and four Territorial battalions, 7th to 10th. During the course of the war another thirty-nine battalions were formed, making the regiment the second largest in the army along with The King’s (Liverpool), though not all battalions survived to the end of the war. Losses amounted to 12,720, eighty-one battle honours were awarded to the regiment and five soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross. The Middlesex were in action right from the outset of the fighting: the first soldier of the British Expeditionary Force to be killed in France was Lance Corporal John Parr from North Finchley who served with 4th Middlesex and was killed in action on 21 August 1914. By unhappy coincidence the first British officer to be killed in France served in the same battalion: Major W. H. Abell of Norton Hall, Worcestershire, was killed at Mons two days later. The regiment served on all battlefronts, including an intervention by the 25th Middlesex in support of anti-Bolshevik forces in Murmansk in 1919. This involved a lengthy journey across Siberia which the battalion met with customary phlegm, their commanding officer noting: ‘One and all behaved like Englishmen - the highest eulogy that can be passed upon the conduct of men.’
Perhaps the best known wartime battalion was the 17th Middlesex, which was composed almost entirely of professional footballers from the regimental area. The entire Clapton Orient (later Leyton Orient) football team and ground staff joined up early in the war, stating clearly that they wanted to be part of the 17th ‘Footballers’ Battalion’ and by early 1915 there were 122 professional footballers in its ranks. Among them was Captain Walter Tull, a player with Northampton Town FC who also had the distinction of being the army’s first black officer of the war. The wartime services of those young footballers were recognised on Saturday 30 April 1921 when the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, visited Millfields Road Stadium to watch Clapton Orient play Notts County. The home team won 3-0. This was the first time a member of the British Royal Family had attended a Football League match, the royal visit having been arranged to show gratitude for Clapton Orient’s patriotic example. Although the stadium has long since been demolished to make way for housing, a plaque erected on the site commemorates this historic event. No less singular in its approach was the regiment’s 16th Battalion, which was designated a ‘Public Schools Battalion’ and originally intended to be reserved for young men who had been privately educated at school or university. Towards the end of the war, though, very few soldiers in that battalion had any connection with Middlesex or, indeed, the country’s public schools.
Amongst this group of officers in Vladivostok in 1919 are men of the 25th Battalion The Middlesex Regiment. They were deployed at the end of the First World War as part of the multi-national Allied Intervention Force supporting the anti-Bolshevik White army in the Russian Civil War.
At the beginning of the Second World War 1st Middlesex Regiment was based in Hong Kong and, in common with the rest of the garrison, went into Japanese captivity following the capitulation of the Crown colony at the end of 1941. However, the regiment played a valuable role throughout the war by supplying specialist machine-gun battalions to several infantry divisions in the fighting in Europe. For 1st/7th Middlesex this was something of a baptism of fire as they were posted to the 51st Highland Division whose commander, Major General Douglas Wimberley, had made it clear that he wanted only Highland, or at the very least Lowland, Scots serving under his command. Equipped with carrier-borne medium Vickers machine guns, the four companies represented a cross section of the county of Middlesex – Highgate, Enfield, Hornsey and Tottenham – and their arrival in a division composed of Highland regiments could have been awkward. However, shortly after arriving in the north of Scotland ‘the Cockneys made themselves appreciated and became friends for life with the Highlanders, civilian and military alike’.
That link between The Middlesex Regiment and the Scots was reinforced in 1950 when 1st Middlesex Regiment and 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders formed a weakened infantry brigade which was rushed to South Korea to support US forces following the outbreak of war with North Korea. As the novelist Eric Linklater put it in the Official History of the conflict, both regiments had to draw deeply on their history and traditions: ‘In the months to come both the Middlesex and the Argylls - though nearly half of them were youngsters doing their national training - were to enhance the pride and reputation, not only of the Diehards and the 91st, but of all the Army.’
In 1966 the Middlesex Regiment became the 4th Battalion of the newly created Queen’s Regiment, but it was disbanded in 1970 and in the years that followed the Middlesex lineage became increasingly obscure. By the time The Queen’s amalgamated with The Royal Hampshire Regiment in 1992 to form The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, in reality the old connections with Mill Hill had long since disappeared.
Mysore, Seringapatam, Peninsula, Albuhera, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Nive, Nivelle, Pyrenees, Vittoria, Alma, Inkerman, Sevastopol, New Zealand, South Africa 1879, Relief of Ladysmith, South Africa 1900–02
Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour
Mons, Le Cateau, Retreat from Mons, Marne 1914, Aisne 1914, 18, La Bassée 1914, Messines 1914, 17, 18, Armentières 1914, Neuve Chapelle, Ypres 1915, 17, 18, Gravenstafel, St. Julien, Frezenberg, Bellewaarde, Aubers, Hooge 1915, Loos, Somme 1916, 18, Albert 1916, 18, Bazentin, Delville Wood, Pozières, Ginchy, Flers-Courcelette, Morval, Thiepval, Le Transloy, Ancre Heights, Ancre 1916, 18, Bapaume 1917, 18, Arras 1917, 18, Vimy 1917, Scarpe 1917, 18, Arleux, Pilckem, Langemarck 1917, Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcappelle, Passchendaele, Cambrai 1917, 18, St. Quentin, Rosières, Avre, Villers Bretonneux, Lys, Estaires, Hazebrouck, Bailleul, Kemmel, Scherpenberg, Hindenburg Line, Canal du Nord, St. Quentin Canal, Courtrai, Selle, Valenciennes, Sambre, France and Flanders 1914–18, Italy 1917–18, Struma, Doiran 1918, Macedonia 1915–18, Suvla, Landing at Suvla, Scimitar Hill, Gallipoli 1915, Rumani, Egypt 1915–17, Gaza, Jerusalem, Jericho, Jordan, Tell ‘Asur, Palestine 1917–18, Mesopotamia 1917–18, Murman 1919, Dukhovskaya, Siberia 1918–19
Dyle, Defence of Escaut, Ypres-Comines Canal, Dunkirk 1940, Normandy Landing, Cambes, Breville, Odon, Caen, Orne, Hill 112, Bourguébus Ridge, Troarn, Mont Pincon, Falaise, Seine 1944, Nederrijn, Le Havre, Lower Maas, Venraij, Meijel, Geilenkirchen, Venlo Pocket, Rhineland, Reichswald, Goch, Rhine, Lingen, Brinkum, Bremen, North-West Europe 1940, 44–45, El Alamein, Advance on Tripoli, Mareth, Akarit, Djebel Roumana, North Africa 1942–43, Francofonte, Sferro, Sferro Hills, Sicily 1943, Anzio, Carroceto, Gothic Line, Monte Grande, Italy 1944–45, Hong Kong, South-East Asia 1941
Carried on the Regimental Colour
Naktong Bridgehead, Chongju, Chongchon II Chuam-Ni, Kapyong-chon, Kapyong, Korea 1950–51
Sergeant John Park, 77th Regiment, Crimean War, 1854
Colour Sergeant George Gardiner, 57th Regiment, Crimean War, 1855
Private Charles McCorrie, 57th Regiment, Crimean War, 1855
Private Alexander Wright 77th Regiment, Crimean War, 1855
Ensign John Thornton Down, 57th Regiment, Maori War, 1860
Drummer Dudley Stagpoole, 57th Regiment, Maori War, 1860
2nd Lieutenant Rupert Price Hallowes, 4th Battalion, First World War, 1915
Private (later Corporal) Frederick Jeremiah Edwards, 12th Battalion, First World War, 1916
Private (later Sergeant) Robert Edward Ryder, 12th Battalion, First World War, 1916
Captain Allastair McReady-Diarmid, 17th Battalion, First World War, 1917
Captain (later Brigadier) Alfred Maurice Toye, 2nd Battalion, First World War, 1918
