Surviving members of the original 2nd Battalion The Rifle Brigade which crossed over to France in 1914 with the British Expeditionary Force. They left behind them 800 casualties buried in France and Flanders.
Contrary to what may be implied by its title – a brigade is normally a grouping of infantry battalions – The Rifle Brigade was a regiment with a conceit worthy of its abilities. Its spirit was captured by Bernard Cornwell in his best-selling Sharpe novels and the regiment enjoyed many unique distinctions during its 158 years of existence. Formed in 1800 as an ‘Experimental Corps of Riflemen’, or the 95th Rifle Regiment, to provide the army with elite troops who would act as sharpshooters, scouts and skirmishers, it enjoyed a close association with the Duke of Wellington on whose orders it was taken out of the numbered Regiments of the Line in 1816 and named The Rifle Brigade with four operational battalions.
Although the regiment disappeared in 1958, when it began the first of several amalgamations, many of its traditions live on in The Rifles, which was formed in 2007 from the army’s rifle and light infantry regiments. The Rifle Brigade is represented in the 4th Battalion and there are other long-standing connections with the past. The Rifles still has its headquarters at Peninsula Barracks in Winchester, which is also home to several military museums as well as an exclusive private housing development. Winchester was also the headquarters of another notable rifle regiment, The King’s Royal Rifle Corps (60th), which is another constituent part of The Rifles.
Some idea of the sense of elitism and disciplined informality central to the ethos of The Rifle Brigade can be found in the fictional figure of the maverick Richard Sharpe who serves in the 95th during its campaigns in the Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. In an early episode Sharpe greets the men assigned to him and makes it clear that they will have to prove themselves to his satisfaction before he accepts them. The accuracy of Cornwell’s depiction is confirmed by Recollections of Rifleman Harris, a memoir written by Benjamin Randell Harris, a young man from Hampshire who joined the newly formed 95th in Ireland. Although illiterate, his recollections were recorded and transcribed by Captain Henry Curling in the 1830s and they remain one of the best introductions to life as a private soldier in Wellington’s army. Harris is particularly astute about the regiment’s role in the Peninsular War where the concept of the light infantry came into its own. He said of that time: ‘I enjoyed life more whilst on active service than I have ever done since, and I look back on my time spent on the fields of the Peninsula as the only part worthy of remembrance.’
With their smart green uniforms and the rapid marching style of 140 paces per minute, The Rifle Brigade cut fine figures on parade and in common with other rifle regiments they carried no colours. To transmit commands in battle, the battalions in The Rifle Brigade used bugles instead of the drums employed by line infantry for the same purpose. There was also a marked difference in tactics: riflemen were trained to work in open order ahead of the main infantry formations and were encouraged to think for themselves. They were taught to make best use of natural cover and to harass the enemy with aimed shots instead of relying on the mass volley and the use of bayonet for close-quarter killing. Their weapons were also different: whereas the infantry of the line used the reliable Brown Bess musket, men of The Rifle Brigade were issued with the modern Baker rifle which had a longer range and was considerably more accurate. During the Peninsular War, Rifleman Thomas Plunkett of the 1st Battalion shot the French general Auguste-Marie-François Colbert de Chabanais at a range of over a hundred yards, a remarkable achievement at the time; Plunkett then shot a second French officer who rode to the general’s aid, thus proving that the first shot was not a fluke. In 1852 the regiment was granted the title ‘The Prince Consort’s Own Rifle Brigade’ in honour of HRH Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria.
Surviving members of the original 2nd Battalion The Rifle Brigade which crossed over to France in 1914 with the British Expeditionary Force. They left behind them 800 casualties buried in France and Flanders.
To meet the need for men during the First World War, The Rifle Brigade raised twenty-eight battalions for service on the Western Front as well as in Salonika, where the 22nd Rifle Brigade had in its ranks more than sixty men over the age of sixty. The first two of twelve Victoria Crosses awarded to the regiment during the conflict were won by Company Sergeant Major Harry Daniels and Acting Corporal Cecil Reginald Noble, both 2nd Rifle Brigade, who advanced ahead of the battalion under heavy fire during the Battle of Neuve Chapelle on 12 March 1915 and successfully cut the barbed wire blocking the advance. Four months later, on 30 July 1915, a third VC was awarded to 2nd Lieutenant Sidney Clayton Woodroffe, 8th Rifle Brigade, for his courageous defence of a position at Hooge on the Ypres sector. His death was commemorated by the poet Charles Hamilton Sorley who had been at Marlborough College with him:
There is no fitter end than this.
No need is now to yearn nor sigh.
We know the glory that is his,
A glory that can never die.
Woodroffe’s older brother Kenneth served in 6th Rifle Brigade and was a first-class cricketer who played for Sussex and Cambridge University. He was killed in action on 9 May 1915. The regiment was also home to one of only three father and son recipients of the VC in the British Army: Major Billy Congreve for his leadership at Longueval on the Somme and his father, General Walter Congreve, who received his award at Colenso in December 1899 during the Boer War. To reflect the large numbers of Londoners who joined The Rifle Brigade during the war, the regiment’s memorial to the ‘11,576 Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers and Riflemen of the Rifle Brigade Who Fell in the Great War 1914–1918’ stands in Grosvenor Gardens, Victoria, London. Designed by John Tweed, it was unveiled in 1920 and contains three figures representing a rifleman of the conflict and an officer and rifleman of the early nineteenth century.
At the outbreak of the Second World War the regiment’s tradition of speed and initiative in battle was instrumental in the decision to give its regular battalions a motorised role during the early fighting in France. That could not save the 1st Battalion, however, which was forced to surrender at Calais on 26 May 1940 after putting up a stubborn defence against superior numbers, but it was re-formed and went on to serve with great gallantry alongside the 2nd Battalion in North Africa. Four other battalions served in the Italian campaign and at the end of the conflict the regiment was awarded fifty-seven battle honours.
Men of a battalion of The Rifle Brigade being trained on a Bren gun, in the period between the two world wars.
Given The Rifle Brigade’s reputation as an elite regiment it is not surprising that it has produced a fair number of outstanding officers, including General Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1918, and General Sir Frank Kitson, an expert on modern low-intensity warfare. Among the more flamboyant soldiers who served in The Rifle Brigade was Neil ‘Bunny’ Roger, a well-known couturier and dandy whose dressmaking business in London attracted an international clientele, including many of the most famous film stars of the day. During the fighting in Italy in 1944 he claimed to have gone into action wearing a chiffon scarf and carrying a copy of the fashion magazine Vogue; on another occasion he allegedly responded to a sergeant’s question regarding approaching German infantrymen with his stock phrase, ‘When in doubt, powder heavily.’
Rifle regiments did not carry Colours
Copenhagen, Monte Video, Rolica, Vimiera, Corunna, Busaco, Barrosa, Fuentes d’Onor, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, Toulouse, Peninsula, Waterloo, South Africa 1846–47, South Africa 1851–2–3, Alma, Inkerman, Sevastopol, Lucknow, Ashantee 1873–74, Ali Masjid, Afghanistan 1878–79, Burma 1885–87, Khartoum, Defence of Ladysmith, Relief of Ladysmith, South Africa 1899–1902
Le Cateau, Retreat from Mons, Marne 1914, Aisne 1914, 18, Armentières 1914, Neuve Chapelle, Ypres 1915, 17, Gravenstafel, St. Julien, Frezenberg, Bellewaarde, Aubers, Hooge 1915, Somme 1916, 18, Albert 1916, 18, Bazentin, Delville Wood, Guillemont, Flers-Courcelette, Morval, Le Transloy, Ancre Heights, Ancre 1916, 18, Arras 1917, 18, Vimy 1917, Scarpe 1917, 18, Arleux, Messines 1917, Pilckem, Langemarck 1917, Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcappelle, Passchendaele, Cambrai 1917, 18, St. Quentin, Rosières, Avre, Villers Bretonneux, Lys, Hazebrouck, Béthune, Drocourt-Quéant, Hindenburg Line, Havrincourt, Canal du Nord, Selle, Valenciennes, Sambre, France and Flanders 1914–18, Macedonia 1915–18
Calais 1940, Villers Bocage, Odon, Bourguébus Ridge, Mont Pincon, Le Perier Ridge, Falaise, Antwerp, Hechtel, Nederrijn, Lower Maas, Roer, Leese, Aller, North-West Europe 1940, 44–45, Egyptian Frontier 1940, Beda Fomm, Mersa el Brega, Agedabia, Derna Aerodrome, Tobruk 1941, Sidi Rezegh 1941, Chor es Sufan, Saunnu, Gazala, Knightsbridge, Defence of Alamein Line, Ruweisat, Alam el Halfa, El Alamein, Tebaga Gap, Medjez el Bab, Kassarine, Thala, Fondouk Pass, El Kourzia, Djebel Kournine, Tunis, Hammam Lif, North Africa 1940–43, Cardito, Cassino II, Liri Valley, Melfa Crossing, Monte Rotondo, Capture of Perugia, Monte Malbe, Arezzo, Advance to Florence, Gothic Line, Orsara, Tossigniano, Argenta Gap, Fossa Sembalina, Italy 1943–45
Rifleman Francis Wheatley, 1st Battalion, Crimean War, 1854
Lieutenant (later Major General Sir) the Hon. Henry Hugh Clifford, The Rifle Brigade, Crimean War, 1854
Lieutenant (later Colonel Sir) William James Montgomery Cunninghame, 1st Battalion, Crimean War, 1854
Lieutenant (later Colonel) Claude Thomas Bourchier, 1st Battalion, Crimean War, 1854
Rifleman (later Corporal) Joseph Bradshaw, 2nd Battalion, Crimean War, 1855
Rifleman Robert Humpston, 2nd Battalion, Crimean War, 1855
Rifleman (later Corporal) Roderick McGregor, 2nd Battalion, Crimean War, 1855
Lieutenant (later Brevet Major) John Simpson Knox, 2nd Battalion, Crimean War, 1857
Captain (later Colonel) Henry Wilmot, 2nd Battalion, Indian Mutiny, 1858
Corporal (later Sergeant) William Nash, 2nd Battalion, Indian Mutiny, 1858
Rifleman David Hawkes, 2nd Battalion, Indian Mutiny, 1858
Rifleman (later Corporal) James Shaw, 3rd Battalion, Indian Mutiny, 1858
Rifleman, Timothy O’Hea, 1st Battalion, Canada, 1866
Captain (later General Sir) Walter Norris Congreve, The Rifle Brigade, Boer War, 1899
Rifleman (later Lance Corporal) Alfred Edward Durrant, 2nd Battalion, Boer War, 1900
Brevet Major (later Brigadier) John Edmund Gough, The Rifle Brigade, Somaliland, 1903
Company Sergeant Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Harry Daniels, 2nd Battalion, First World War, 1915
Acting Corporal Cecil Reginald Noble, 2nd Battalion, First World War, 1915
Lance Sergeant (later Captain) Douglas Walter Belcher, 1/5th Battalion, First World War, 1915
2nd Lieutenant Sidney Clayton Woodroffe, 8th Battalion, First World War, 1915
Corporal Alfred George Drake, 8th Battalion, First World War, 1915
Brevet Major William La Touche Congreve, The Rifle Brigade, First World War, 1916
2nd Lieutenant George Edward Cates, 2nd Battalion, First World War, 1917
Sergeant, William Francis Burman, 16th Battalion, First World War, 1917
Sergeant Arthur George Knight, 2nd/8th Battalion, First World War, 1917
Lance Sergeant (later Captain) Joseph Edward Woodall, 1st Battalion, First World War, 1918
Sergeant (later Company Sergeant Major) William Gregg, 13th Battlion, First World War, 1918
Rifleman (later Sergeant) William Beesley, 13th Battalion, First World War, 1918
Lieutenant Colonel Victor Buller Turner, 2nd Battalion, Second World War, 1942
