The Making Of The British Army (79 page)

Major Copeland will not go either; his three years are almost up as 2IC, and although he is still hoping to ‘pick up promotion’ in due course he is beginning to look for a job which will allow him to see more of his family.

2nd Battalion the Duke of M—ster’s are in no way remarkable. They have one or two ‘stars’, but are otherwise what the colonel of the regiment, Major-General Hardy, who commanded a battalion of the Royal —shires many years ago, calls a ‘solid regiment of the line’. As colonel, his main concern is finding officers (as well as overseeing the regimental investments and charitable trust). He wishes the regiment were more fashionable at Sandhurst – like, say, The Rifles – and that there were a few more stars in the officers’ mess, but on the whole he thinks the amalgamation has gone pretty well. These things you just have to get on with, as he says.

The colonelcy is an entirely honorary appointment, unpaid, demanding and time-consuming. General Hardy is fifty-nine and
retired from the army three years ago; he now runs the Institute of Practitioners. He has to juggle his regimental responsibilities carefully with those of his job at the Institute (which he cannot afford to give up just yet because two children are still at university, and there are the school fees to pay off). His wife would like to see a little more of him now that he has left the colours, and he himself would like to play a bit more golf. However, one of the great hidden strengths of the British army, of the infantry and cavalry in particular, is the depth which the colonelcy and its network of former officers represent. So first he has to find someone to take over from him. The regiment has been his life for forty years, and for all that the regiment has changed in that time – as has the army – the more it has in essence remained the same; and he will not pass the baton lightly.

THE REDESIGNATIONS, AMALGAMATIONS AND DISBANDMENTS OF THE BRITISH
infantry of the line would be a worthy specialist subject for
Mastermind.
A particular regimental number sometimes disappeared from the line altogether, during a period of retrenchment for example. At various times, therefore, a number had a different name attached to it, and the later name was not always the official successor of the earlier one; regiments were sometimes deemed to have been fully disbanded, and when a new regiment was raised during a period of expansion, or a regiment raised by the East India Company was transferred to the Crown, the ‘spare’ number was reassigned to the new unit. So, for example, the number 77 has at various times been attached to ‘Montgomerie’s Highlanders’, ‘the Atholl Highlanders’, ‘the East Middlesex Regiment of Foot’ and ‘the Hindoostan Regiment of Foot’.

A little learning is therefore a dangerous thing; but there is not room here to drink too deep of the spring. Instead I have tried to simplify the list by taking the name(s) most commonly associated with the number in the half-century before the final ‘Cardwell – Childers’ reforms of 1881 which produced the names of the infantry regiments in which perhaps the reader’s grand-, great-grand- or great-great-grandfather fought during the First World War. We may perhaps call the list ‘the line of battle at its fullest Victorian stretch’:

1st Regiment of Foot (Royal Scots/Royal Regiment of Foot)

2nd (Queen’s Royal Regiment of Foot)

3rd (East Kent Regiment of Foot) or The Buffs

4th (King’s Own Regiment of Foot)

5th (The Northumberland Regiment of Foot); from 1836 Fusiliers

6th (1st Royal Warwickshire Regiment of Foot)

7th (Royal Fuziliers)

8th (The King’s Regiment of Foot)

9th (The East Norfolk Regiment of Foot)

10th (The North Lincolnshire Regiment of Foot)

11th (The North Devonshire Regiment of Foot)

12th (The East Suffolk Regiment of Foot)

13th (1st Somersetshire Light Infantry Regiment of Foot)

14th (Bedfordshire Regiment of Foot/Buckinghamshire Regiment of Foot)

15th (The Yorkshire East Riding Regiment of Foot)

16th (Bedfordshire Regiment of Foot/The Buckinghamshire Regiment of Foot)

17th (The Leicestershire Regiment of Foot)

18th (The Royal Irish Regiment of Foot)

19th (North Yorkshire Riding Regiment of Foot); Green Howards

20th (East Devonshire Regiment of Foot)

21st (Royal North British Fusiliers/Royal Scots Fusilier Regiment of Foot)

22nd (The Cheshire Regiment of Foot)

23rd (Royal Welch Fusiliers)

24th (2nd Warwickshire Regiment of Foot)

25th (King’s Own (Scottish) Borderers)

26th (The Cameronian Regiment of Foot)

27th (Inniskilling Regiment of Foot)

28th (North Gloucestershire Regiment of Foot)

29th (Worcestershire Regiment of Foot)

30th (Cambridgeshire Regiment of Foot)

31st (Huntingdonshire Regiment of Foot)

32nd (Cornwall Regiment of Foot)

33rd (1st Yorkshire West Riding Regiment of Foot)

34th (Cumberland Regiment of Foot)

35th (Sussex Regiment of Foot)

36th (Herefordshire Regiment of Foot)

37th (North Hampshire Regiment of Foot)

38th (1st Staffordshire Regiment of Foot)

39th (Dorsetshire Regiment of Foot)

40th (2nd Somersetshire Regiment of Foot)

41st (Welsh Regiment of Foot)

42nd (Royal Highland Regiment of Foot); Black Watch

43rd (Monmouthshire Regiment of Foot)

44th (East Essex Regiment of Foot)

45th (Nottinghamshire Regiment of Foot)

46th (South Devonshire Regiment of Foot)

47th (Lancashire Regiment of Foot)

48th (Northamptonshire Regiment of Foot)

49th (Hertfordshire Regiment of Foot)

50th (The Queen’s Own Regiment of Foot)

51st (2nd Yorkshire West Riding Regiment of Foot)

52nd (Oxfordshire Regiment of Foot (Light Infantry))

53rd (Shropshire Regiment of Foot)

54th (West Norfolk Regiment of Foot)

55th (Westmoreland Regiment of Foot)

56th (West Essex Regiment of Foot)

57th (West Middlesex Regiment of Foot)

58th (Rutlandshire Regiment of Foot)

59th (2nd Nottingham Regiment of Foot)

60th (Royal American Regiment of Foot/The King’s Royal Rifle Corps)

61st (South Gloucestershire Regiment of Foot)

62nd (Wiltshire Regiment of Foot)

63rd (West Suffolk Regiment of Foot)

64th (2nd Staffordshire Regiment of Foot)

65th (2nd Yorkshire North Riding Regiment of Foot)

66th (Berkshire Regiment of Foot)

67th (South Hampshire Regiment of Foot)

68th (Durham Regiment of Foot (Light Infantry))

69th (South Lincolnshire Regiment of Foot)

70th (Surrey Regiment of Foot)

71st (Glasgow Highland Regiment of Foot)

72nd (Duke of Albany’s Own Regiment of Foot)

73rd (Perthshire Regiment of Foot)

74th (Argyllshire Highlanders)

75th (Prince of Wales’ Regiment)

76th (Hindoostan Regiment of Foot)

77th (East Middlesex Regiment of Foot)

78th (Seaforth Highlanders)

79th (Cameron Highlanders)

80th (Staffordshire Volunteers)

81st (Loyal Lincoln Volunteers Regiment of Foot)

82nd (Prince of Wales’ Volunteers)

83rd (County of Dublin Regiment of Foot)

84th (York and Lancaster Regiment of Foot)

85th (The King’s Regiment of Light Infantry (Bucks Volunteers))

86th (Royal County Down Regiment of Foot)

87th (Royal Irish Fusiliers)

88th (The Connaught Rangers)

89th (The Princess Victoria’s Regiment of Foot)

90th (Perthshire Volunteers (Light Infantry))

91st (Argyllshire Regiment of Foot)

92nd (Gordon Highlanders)

93rd (Sutherland Highlanders)

94th (Royal Welsh Volunteers)

95th (Derbyshire Regiment of Foot)

96th (Queen’s Own Germans)

97th (Earl of Ulster’s Regiment of Foot)

98th (Prince of Wales’ Regiment of Foot)

99th (Lanarkshire Regiment of Foot)

100th (Prince of Wales’ Royal Canadian Regiment of Foot)

101st (Royal Bengal Fusiliers)

102nd (Royal Madras Fusiliers)

103rd (Royal Bombay Fusiliers)

104th (Bengal Fusiliers)

105th (Madras Light Infantry)

106th (Bombay Light Infantry)

107th (Bengal Infantry)

108th (Madras Infantry)

109th (Bombay Infantry)

110th Regiment of Foot [without territorial designation]

111th Regiment of Foot

… and so on to the 135th, the highest number reached.

Note:
In 1816 the 95th (Rifles) were ‘taken out of the line’ and redesignated The Rifle Brigade. A new regiment was raised in 1823 for service in Malta, given the number ‘95’ and two years later the territorial affiliation ‘Derbyshire’.