The history of the British Army is really the story of its regiments and the men who served in them. From the very beginning they formed the backbone of a singular institution which is itself a reflection of the way the people of Britain view themselves and their collective past. The story began in 1660 when Charles II returned to London to retrieve the throne his father had been forced to vacate two decades earlier. At the time military institutions were not popular – people remembered only too well the years of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the rule of the major generals – but the new king had to be protected and the country had to be defended. Through a process of slow growth and frequent tardiness an army eventually came into being and from the outset it was based solidly on a regimental system which needed steady supplies of recruits to keep it in existence. Men joined up for many valid reasons such as a sense of duty, out of patriotism or a need for adventure, but not all motives were commendable. For every young man attracted by the chance to wear a uniform there would be many more who had broken the law or had fallen into debt or had fathered an illegitimate child. Another pressing impulse was that they had no option. In the poorest families an unemployed boy was an extra mouth to feed and in every regiment there were large numbers of young men who had been driven to escape grinding poverty by becoming soldiers. Others were simply coerced. The curious, the idle and the gullible were often pressed into service by smart recruiting sergeants who spun yarns of glory and honour and backed them up with ready supplies of alcohol. In that uncertain environment the regiment was all-important for inculcating a sense of continuity, structure and, above all, belonging.
Before too long, regiments were priding themselves on being as much a family affair as a military formation, providing their young recruits with the embodiment of home, perhaps the only home they would ever know. There was more to it, though, than a simple financial or social transaction. For all the rough and ready discipline, and for all the cheapness of the military life, there was a nobility to the soldier’s calling. It might not have been popular among the wider public, and most civilians felt that the army was better kept out of sight and out of mind, but for those in uniform soldiering was an honourable profession that was open to all. From the late eighteenth century onwards infantry regiments were linked to their local communities and this was an important factor in encouraging recruitment and building up local pride. Regiments also reflected and played upon national and regional differences: solid English and Welsh county regiments consisting of tough and resilient men from the shires or the industrial towns, dashing Highlanders with their panoply of kilts and feathered bonnets and, everywhere, Irishmen serving a Crown they might not otherwise have supported. Not for nothing has it been said that the army and its regiments are the nation in uniform, for they are bound securely into the wider community, tied fast by bonds of affection, loyalty and pride that are difficult to break. ‘Never forget,’ said the eminent Field Marshal Archibald, Lord Wavell, ‘the regiment is the foundation of everything.’ Or, as Lord Moran, Winston Churchill’s physician, put it equally succinctly in his great study, The Anatomy of Courage: all military training should lead soldiers ‘to accept the religion of the Regiment – that only the Regiment matters’.
In return for that love of regiment soldiers have not always been well used by the politicians, perhaps because they were always only small in number and had little influence beyond the barracks and the battlefield. With the exception of the two world wars of the twentieth century the army rarely numbered more than 250,000 and by 2020 its numbers will have fallen to 82,000 regular soldiers, a poor reward, one would have thought, for all past endeavours. Over the years, periods of warfare have always been followed by times of peace when expenditure on the armed forces dropped, soldiers were made redundant and regiments, mainly infantry, were either disbanded or amalgamated, often with painful consequences for those affected. Even in recent times some regiments were raised specifically for wartime service to meet the needs of the hour – The Glider Pilot Regiment and The Reconnaissance Regiment of the Second World War come to mind – while others were lost almost absent-mindedly when penny-pinching became the order of the day. However, there is a case for saying that no regiment is ever entirely lost and that it will live on in men’s minds as a mystical entity. The British Army certainly makes a great deal of the ‘golden thread’ which still links, say, the Middlesex ‘Die-Hards’ to the modern Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, but the harsh reality is that those ties are only as strong as the men who made them. Like it or not, the old and bold soldiers are a dwindling band and once they have fallen out for the last time the regiments will be truly lost.
The key points in the story of the lost regiments are the following dates in which successive governments took momentous decisions to change the character and complexion of the army’s infantry regiments:
As can be seen, the main cull took place in the years after the Second World War when the army was steadily reduced in size as a result of financial belt-tightening and the introduction of improved weaponry. Between 1958 and 1961 its overall size came down to 185,000 and the infantry suffered most as the number of battalions was virtually halved. The need to supply personnel for the logistic and support services also meant that the infantry was less attractive as a career and young people reacted accordingly. To achieve those reductions regiments had to be amalgamated or disbanded and across the country the reforms sparked passionate and sentimental debate. In a rearguard action to prevent the introduction of a Corps of Infantry with numbered battalions, other expedients were tried – notably the raising of large regiments with battalions representing the old county regiments, and the creation of administrative brigades for smaller regiments – but soon these, too, had to be changed as the army steadily contracted. During this process a huge swathe was cut through the south and south-east of England with the result that local regiments such as The Buffs simply disappeared. By the beginning of the twenty-first century other parts of the country had followed, even in Scotland and the north of England where recruiting had remained reasonably buoyant. During this process illustrious names, previously resistant to change, such as The Black Watch, were removed unceremoniously from the army’s Order of Battle.
A word needs to be said about the regiments that have been included in this volume. All were in existence in one form or another in 1881 at the conclusion of the farreaching Cardwell/Childers reforms that gave the line infantry regiments their territorial structure – seventy-one infantry regiments with 141 battalions – and all survived into the second half of the twentieth century before facing disbandment or further amalgamation. (This accounts for the omission of The Green Howards, The Cheshire Regiment, The Royal Welch Fusiliers and The King’s Own Scottish Borderers, all of which survived until 2006.) There is, though, an exception to this rule to take account of two infantry regiments whose histories are unique and which survived intact until the Future Infantry Structure review of 2004. The first is The Royal Scots, founded in 1633 and therefore the oldest line infantry regiment in the British Army. In 2006 it amalgamated with The King’s Own Scottish Borderers (25th) to emerge as The Royal Scots Borderers, 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland. The second is The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment; the only line infantry regiment to bear the name of a commoner in its title, it also survived intact until the 2004 reforms when it became The 3rd Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment. Otherwise the selection was made to represent the geographical spread of the United Kingdom and Ireland and to reflect the diversity of the many campaigns fought by the British Army over four centuries. Against that background the history of the British Army shows that the story of its regiments has been one of constant development, with cutbacks, amalgamations and changes of name being part of a process of evolution stretching back over several centuries. It would be fair to claim that in every case the development has not led to a diminution of the army’s capabilities but has produced new regiments that are the equal of their predecessors.
For evidence of the character and fortitude of generations of soldiers who served in the army’s line infantry regiments we need look no further than the countless Regimental Colours which are laid up in quiet places in county towns throughout Britain and Ireland. Hanging in cathedrals, churches or within the solemnity of regimental museums, they are all mute witnesses to the courage of men united in a common cause who did their duty uncomplainingly and unquestioningly, often accepting death and spurning dishonour, secure in the knowledge that their actions would live on in men’s minds long after their passing. In just about every case those regiments have disappeared from the army’s Order of Battle and their Colours are perhaps only idle curiosities to later generations, but in a brief verse attributed to the distinguished soldier-historian Lieutenant General Sir Edward Hamley it is possible to understand that some facets of military life are so potent that they can never perish:
A moth-eaten rag on a worm-eaten pole,
It does not look likely to stir a man’s soul.
’Tis the deeds that were done ’neath the moth-eaten rag,
When the pole was a staff and the rag was a flag.