Soldiers

by Richard Holmes

  The fundamental issue of under-recruiting in the Scots infantry was rarely addressed by supporters of the status quo, and many who sympathised with those so deeply hurt by the changes found it hard to see how the fragile business of recruiting would be improved by wholesale criticism of the new structure. Some of the English and Welsh regiments amalgamated at this time were older and not a jot less distinguished than similarly affected Scots regiments. It was no less of a painful wrench for the Green Howards to become 2 Yorks; the Cheshires to become 1 Mercian; and the Royal Welch Fusiliers to become 1 Royal Welsh. There was much private grief and a smattering of public protest south of the border, but ultimately change was accepted more positively than it was in Scotland. Richard Dannatt had no doubt that it had been an extraordinarily painful process, for, as he saw it,

  the history of the British Army invariably points to the strength of the Army being the strength of the Regimental System. We tinker with it at our peril, and just got away with it between 2004 and 2005. Later, as Chief of the General Staff, it was up to me to own and implement those earlier decisions, and in the frenetic world of the Army in recent years I believe we have come through this reorganisation intact. For some it has gone better than others, but the future is in front and the past behind. We have always adapted and must continue to do so.25

  Scotland’s turmoil emphasised that local connections were still important, even if it was not always easy to translate them into serving soldiers; that veterans, proudly wearing badges and medals, attracted public sympathy; that politicians would be quick to engage, often as part of a wider battle; and that the media was unlikely to let lack of knowledge prevent it from entering the fray. Also, in a much broader sense, it hammered home yet again the point that the regimental system is at least as much about emotion as about logic. As the date of the Army Board’s eventual decision approached, colonels of regiments strained every nerve in order to ensure a favourable outcome, marshalling their supporters, military, civic, and political, while leaking like sieves to an attentive press. I myself had become convinced that, although with two well-recruited regular battalions my regiment should, in logic, emerge intact – as indeed it did – its survival was now the single most important thing to me. A few months before I was standing steady for demographic logic and workable compromise. Now, suddenly, that turbulent undertow of collar dogs and stable belts, facing colours, and goose-necked spurs had tugged me off my feet.

  CHAPTER 20

  TRIBAL MARKINGS

  NO SOONER DID the army dress in uniform than the centrifugal pressures of the regimental system strove to make it as far from uniform as possible. Regiments developed their own particular quirks of dress to distinguish themselves from each other; some subtle, some less so. As a 1645 description of Parliament’s New Model Army noted ‘The men are redcoats all, the whole army are only distinguished by the several facings of their coats.’1 There was no regular army before the Restoration, but both the Yeomen of the Guard and the Yeomen Warders (founded by Henry VII in 1485) wore the Tudor livery of red. After 1660, horse – with the exception of the Blues – and foot alike dressed in red. Artillery, light cavalry, and logisticians wore blue, and rifle regiments green. Logisticians came into being after the army’s transport, supply, and medical services were fully professionalised in the nineteenth century. Uniform coats were ‘faced’, usually in a contrasting colour, although the 33rd Foot obstinately wore red faced with red.

  The long coats of the eighteenth century were lined in the facing colour, which showed to good effect on the wide, buttoned-back lapels, the turned-up cuffs and the garment’s inside where it was folded back across the thigh. In the eighteenth century coats were ‘laced’ with broad worsted ribbon of regimental pattern that stretched from the inner edge of the lapel to each buttonhole, where it might end square or in the arrowhead called a ‘bastion-end’. Practice varied greatly – some regiments paired their buttons and so doubled up the lace – but cuffs, pocket edges, and coat turnbacks were all suitable candidates for the application of lace; drummers were smothered in it.

  Red coats were last worn in battle in the Sudan in 1885. By 1902, when the last pattern of red tunic was authorised, facings simply appeared on collar and cuffs. The War Office had made an earlier attempt to standardise by ordering that all royal regiments should wear blue facings, and all non-royal regiments white. The scheme soon foundered with the Buffs arguing it was absurd that they should lose a facing colour that defined them. By 1914 regiments had facing colours that, in many cases, dated from the 1748 regulations. There was indeed a good deal of blue and white, but amongst the more vivid exceptions the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers wore gosling green, the Norfolks yellow, the Devons Lincoln green, and the Middlesex lemon yellow. The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, naturally enough, followed the precedent of the 33rd Foot and wore red facings, just as the 33rd had done in 1748. The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent, a Cardwell merger of the 50th and 97th Foot, had the black facings that had earned the 50th its nickname ‘the dirty half-hundred’.

  Facing colours marked a man to his regiment as surely as a distinctive cowhide shield linked one of Shaka’s Zulu warriors to his. When Sergeant Ned Botwood of the 47th Foot wrote the words of the song ‘Hot Stuff’ before he embarked for the attack on Quebec in 1758 he made much of the fact that his regiment’s spare clothing had been taken by a French privateer, and the best they could do was to buy the redundant coats of Shirley’s Foot. In consequence the Marquis de Montcalm, to whom Botwood attributed encyclopaedic knowledge of British regimentalia, would be sadly confused.

  When the Forty-seventh regiment is dashing ashore,

  When bullets are whistling and cannons do roar,

  Says Montcalm ‘Those are Shirley’s, I know their lapels.’

  ‘You lie,’ says Ned Botwood, ‘We are of Lascelles!

  Though our clothing is changed, yet we scorn a powder-puff;

  So at ye, ye bitches, here’s give you Hot Stuff.’2

  Facing colours were also used for the fronts of grenadier caps, the shells of drums, bells of arms (the bell-shaped canvas covers used to protect stacked muskets), and the broad shoulder-belts worn by drum majors. Each company in the infantry battalions of Charles II’s army carried its own colour and each troop of horse its own standard. During the Civil War, infantry colours had been carried on short staves and flourished enthusiastically by their bearers. Captain Thomas Venn had seen plenty of service, and devoted several pages to ‘Postures and Flourishing’ in his 1672 manual. By about 1700 there were just three colours in each battalion, one for the small body of pikemen in its centre, and the other two for the two ‘sleeves’ of musketeers on their flanks. In 1743 battalions were ordered to carry only a pair (properly a ‘stand’) of colours. The Sovereign’s Colour of an English regiment was originally ‘the standard of St George’, a red cross on a white ground with the regiment’s distinctive motif, usually derived from its colonel’s arms, in the centre. Scots regiments bore the white-on-blue saltire. After the 1707 Act of Union brought England and Scotland together, the Sovereign Colour became the Union flag, and these new colours were first carried in a general action at Oudenarde on 11 July 1708. What was at first called the ‘Second Colour’ – eventually known as the Regimental Colour – was usually of the regiment’s facing colour, with its motif or device in the centre and the Union in its upper canton. Regiments with red or white facings bore a red cross on a white field, with a Union in the upper canton, though in 1881 they adopted the regiment’s facing colour, and the Union disappeared.

  Between 1743 and 1751 Horse Guards stamped out the practice of colonels using personal devices on colours, and a 1743 warrant specified the badges that ‘old corps’ were allowed to use. From 1751 the regiment’s number, in Roman numerals, appeared within a laurel wreath in the centre of both colours. In 1760 the first battle honour, Emdsorf, was formally granted to the 15th Light Dragoons, although some regiments had unofficially adopted battle honours befor
e this. In 1784 the 12th, 39th, 56th, and 58th Foot were allowed to bear ‘Gibraltar’ on their colours, and the practice soon became more widespread, with ‘Minden’ granted to the appropriate regiments in 1801. A committee was set up in 1882 to regularise the business, and regiments now bear a selection of their world-war battle honours on the Queen’s Colour and a selection of others on the Regimental Colour: all have far more than can be accommodated on a stand of colours. Colours were initially made of painted silk, but were then embroidered from the early nineteenth century. The size altered too: in 1747 the orders were given to stick to 78 ins long by 74 ins deep. They were steadily reduced thereafter, to 48×42 ins in 1858 – when they gained a two-inch gold and red silk fringe – and then 45×36 ins in 1865. The staff was reduced from 118 ins, including its ornamental spearhead, to 105 ins in 1873, by which time a gilded lion and crown had replaced the pointed finial.

  For many years cavalry flags – square-ended standards for horse and dragoon guards, and swallow-tailed guidons for dragoons – were more numerous than infantry colours, for individual troops retained their own. However, the tactical role of light cavalry meant that it was inappropriate for them to carry guidons in the field. They were not taken to the Peninsula, and were abolished in 1834, reappearing only in 1959. Heavy cavalry bore troop standards until the early nineteenth century, and then carried two, Sovereign’s and Regimental, till 1858 when they were ordered to retain only the Sovereign’s standard. Just as the campaign role of light cavalry made guidons an encumbrance, so rifle regiments, from their foundation, had no use for colours. Neither did the Royal Artillery, though its battle honour ‘Ubique’ (everywhere) testified to its wide-ranging achievements.3 We should not, however, expect too strict an application of logic as the Parachute Regiment bears colours, and the Army Air Corps a guidon.

  Colours were presented to a regiment at a formal parade where they were consecrated before being handed over by an appropriate dignitary. They were then ‘trooped’ in slow time down the battalion’s ranks, traditionally so that men should recognise their colours so as to defend them or rally on them in time of need. The process now forms the central part of the annual Queen’s Birthday Parade when the colours of a Foot Guards battalion are trooped. Lieutenant Gordon-Alexander of the 93rd Highlanders tells us,

  The old colours of the 93rd, which had been presented by the great Duke of Wellington in the year 1834, and had been carried throughout the campaign in the Crimea, were replaced on May 22, 1857, by new colours received at the hands of His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, who had but recently been appointed Commander-in-Chief.4

  The old colours were marched off parade, to be laid up in a church or cathedral: the 93rd’s were placed in Glasgow Cathedral above the monument to the regiment’s Crimean dead. Traditionally both the presentation and laying up of colours strengthened a regiment’s links with its recruiting area, and persuading a notable figure to preside over the ceremony gave extra éclat. On Minden Day, 1 August 1986, the Royal Hampshires received new colours from their colonel-in-chief, the Princess of Wales, in the brilliant sunshine of the cricket ground at Tidworth (in the county by a hair’s-breadth), and the old colours were later laid up in Winchester Cathedral, a short walk from the old Royal Hampshire depot.

  Colours spent much of their lives in cases made of black oiled canvas with a brass cap. In peacetime they would be accommodated in the commanding officer’s lodgings or in the mess once these were in general use. They were borne, in battle or on the march, by the battalion’s junior ensigns, and passed up amongst the subalterns by reverse seniority as the need arose, from tiredness on the march or casualties in action. A colour belt, passing over the wearer’s left shoulder, housed a socket into which the butt of the colour-pike could be slotted, taking much of its weight, and cased colours might be sloped across the ensign’s shoulder on the march. Colours were not uncased without reason – when action was evidently imminent, for instance, or when the regiment was on parade, or was about to make its formal entry into a town or garrison.

  Even if the colours were already uncased, the ensign would keep them secured by holding them against the staff with his right hand, letting them fly only on appropriate occasions. The etiquette was elaborate. For instance, if the battalion was quick-marching past a senior officer, then the ensign to the Regimental Colour would slip the silk from his hand to let it fly on the order ‘eyes left’ or ‘eyes right’, deftly snatching it back on ‘eyes front’, while the ensign to the Sovereign’s Colour kept a haughty grip on his colour, letting it fly only for the monarch or their representative. If the battalion, drawn up in line on the very best of its behaviour, delivered a general salute, with the band thumping out ‘Point of War’, the ensigns slipped their colours from their belts, extended them out to the right and then, in one of the most elegant of drill movements, swung them gently downwards and to the left, ending with the gleaming silk laid out before them. However, the Sovereign’s Colour remained stock-still unless the recipient of the salute enjoyed the required royal status.

  Regiments would carry their colours uncased through British cities, and ensigns were careful not to let their colours fly. The exception being if they had been granted the Freedom of the City, which gave them right of entry ‘with bayonets fixed, colours flying and drums beating’. Here again there was a close relationship between recruiting and identity, for a regiment might expect to enjoy the freedom of the cities and major towns within its area, and to hold ‘freedom’ parades from time to time, capitalising on the appeal of music and spectacle to pick up recruits. Colours were received on, or marched off, parade with the battalion at ‘present arms’, and were saluted as they passed. The Royal Artillery extended similar honours to its guns. Because rifle regiments never bore colours, after the Devon and Dorsets had been transformed into 1/Rifles their colours were laid up, on 27 June 2007, in Exeter Cathedral.

  The word ensign referred to the colour’s bearer regardless of his rank, though for a long time it also defined the junior commissioned rank in the infantry. An ensign might well be in his late teens and carrying the colour was a practical problem, because even at the best of times it was heavy, and unwieldy if allowed to fly. On the battlefield it was a natural magnet for hostile fire and physical attack. A stand of colours would be protected by a small group of dedicated NCOs (now constituting two sergeants and a warrant officer) known collectively as the ‘colour party’. Carrying or defending the colours was a dangerous business, as Sergeant William Lawrence of the 40th Foot knew when, on the afternoon of Waterloo, he was ordered to take his place in the colour party:

  This … was a job I did not like at all, but still I went to the work as boldly as I could. There had been before me that day fourteen sergeants already killed and wounded while in charge of the colours, and officers in proportion, and the staff and colours were almost cut in pieces.5

  Colours were last carried in battle at Laing’s Nek in 1881, when the 58th Regiment had 74 men killed, including its commanding officer, and 101 wounded while attacking the Boers. Lieutenants Peel and Baillie set off up the hillside with the Queen’s and Regimental colours under a scorching fire. When Baillie was hit, Peel picked up his colour, and struggled on with both until he tripped in an ant-bear hole and was knocked unconscious. Thinking him dead, Sergeant Budstock took both colours to the rear. Lieutenant Hill carried Baillie to safety but the wounded officer was hit again, this time mortally.

  It was already evident that colours were very vulnerable in irregular warfare. The Regimental Colour of the 1/24th Foot was lost when the Zulus overran the British camp at Isandlwana, and the Queen’s Colour, carried off by Lieutenant Teignmouth Melvill, was found in the Buffalo River ten days later, as Captain Charlie Harford tells us. He

  stumbled on the Colour case mixed up with a host of other things and picking it up I said to Harber, who was closest to me, ‘Look, here’s the case! The Colours can’t be far off!’ Then … I noticed a straight piece of stick in the mi
ddle of the river, almost in line with us … He waded straight in, up to his middle, and got hold of it. On lifting it out he brought up the colour still adhering to it, and on getting it out of the water handed the standard to me, and as he did so the gold-embroidered central scroll dropped out, the silk having more or less rotted from the long immersion in the water.6

  Both colours of the 66th Foot were lost at Maiwand in Afghanistan in 1880, and neither has ever been recovered.

  Colours were emotive enough even in peacetime, and the composition of colour parties, bringing together as they did young officers and older sergeants, symbolised the battalion’s internal cohesion. An ensign had much to learn, not least about the way that the same NCOs who got you out of trouble on parade, might very well get you into it when champagne and bitter were involved at celebrations afterwards. One of the most evocative acts of regimental symbolism commemorates Sergeant Bernard McCabe of the 31st (Huntingdonshire) Regiment. In the attack on the Sikh entrenchments at Sobraon in 1846 Lieutenant Tritton and Ensign Jones, carrying the Queen’s and Regimental Colours of the 31st, were shot down. Lieutenant Noel recovered the Queen’s Colour and carried it with the main assault along the line of the Sikh earthworks, while Sergeant McCabe seized the Regimental Colour and clambered right up to plant it atop the rampart, rallying the attackers. He was commissioned in the field and died bravely as a captain in the 32nd Foot at Lucknow. On 10 February each year, the anniversary of the battle, the Regimental Colour of 1/Queen’s was marched from the Officers’ Mess, through the ranks of the battalion, to the Warrant Officers’ and Sergeants’ Mess, where it was held for the day and eventually recovered, at great peril to his liver, by a subaltern. That day the ensign was not an officer, but a sergeant specially selected for the honour of being ‘Sobraon Sergeant’ for the year. The tradition is today upheld by the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment.