FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS

Evening Star, Issue 23380, 25 September 1939, Page 8

FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS

THE FIRST STANDING ARMY CREATED BY CHARLES 11. It has sometimes been said of the British Army that it is less an army than a collection of regiments, eaeli actuated as much by personal and regional loyalties as by that sHigle unified fealty to Throne and State which is a soldier’s rightful source of inspiration. Such a view, however, ignores the Briton’s innate capacity for so cherishing an immediate allegiance as to nourish the larger loyalty. it is, indeed, through regimental pride in individual privileges and traditions that the British Army is invigorated ; but being so quickened it is the better able to express its corporate fidelity to King and Country. Our national Army’s foundations as a “ professional ” lighting force were laid with the establishment of that modest Koval bodyguard which came into being with the Restoration. Till then the militia forces of Alfred, the feudal levies of Normans, Plantagenets and Tudors, and even the Parliamentary Army of the New Model, had all been characterised by a certain semi-amateurish improvisation. But the “ Merry Monarch ” who rode through the streets of London town that bright' May morning of 1(160 brought many war-experienced veterans in his train. It was from these loyalist exiles’ ranks that he established three troops of Life Guards, subsequently to be expanded into two regiments. (Amalgamated into one regiment under, the “ economy axe,” 1922.) At tho same time a second body, of erstwhile Parliamentary Horse, was placed under the command of the Earl of Oxford, and has survived as the Royal Horse Guards—the Blues. There still remained a host of Royalist veterans from the years of interregnum, clamouring to continue in the Stuart livery; and of these the seasoned warriors of tho former Royal bodyguard of infantry—who had already seen gruelling service, in alliance with tho Spaniards, against the French in 1658 —formed the nucleus of the Ist Regiment of Foot Guards, known since 1815 as the Grenadiers. Vet another body of veterans was that comprising the Coldstream Regiment, commanded by that one-time Parliamentary leader, General George Monck. LIVING UP TO THEKR MOTTO. Many a shrewd blow had these fighters struck in the cause of democracy in the recent quarrel between King and Parliament. But, assured that democratic principles would be safe with the King whose cause had been espoused by their beloved commander, on a morning in February, 1661, they solemnly paraded at the Tower to lay down their arms as ‘‘ Parliament men,” and five minutes afterwards picked them up again as the Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards in the service. On one point, however, they proved adamant, as their motto of Null! Secundus clearly indicates. So far as precedence in the Brigade of Guards was concerned, they were determined to remain '* second to none.” Thus it is that the Coldstreamers —even after the formation, in 1662, of tho battalion destined to become the Scots Guards, and the establishment of the Irish and Welsh Guards in 1900 and 1915 respectively—refused to accept a number and insisted, when with their sister regiments, upon parading on the extreme left of tee line. The plume in their bearskins, however, continues to be worn, with quiet persistency, on the right-hand side.. Many and peculiar are the rights and privileges claimed as intrinsically their own by the Household Troops, and in particular by the “ Tin-bellies ” —by which irreverent nickname the Life Guard is colloquially known, with the alternative sobriquet of ” Piccadilly Butchers.” Apart from the right of entry to the Royal Palaces enjoyed by officer and man alike, it was and is the Life Guards who furnish those mysterious but exalted dignitaries the Gold and the Silver-Stick-in-Waiting; while for years the key of the Royal coach dangled from the end of one of their officers’ pouch-belt cords. One of the captains of the corps, if required! must " be in attendance on ,the King]s person, wheresoever he walks, from his rising to his going to bed.” No sinecure, this duty, in the days of that inveterate pedestrian, Charles 11. The 'Blues, of course, are in almost everything the counterpart of their scarlet-coated brethren, wearing the same aiguillettes of gold cord looped across their glittering cuirasses, as token of the personal quality of their service. With the Foot Guards, theirs ts the right to mount sentry over all the Royal Palaces; while, the pipers of the Scots Guards swing by gaily clad in the Royal Stuart tartan, and the Grenadiers boast an especial “ King’s Company,” every member of which stands a good six feet tall.

SIDE BY SIDE. But perhaps greatest privilege of all is the right shared by all the regiments of the Guards to take their place .side by side with their comrades of the Hue, when the trumpet sounds to action. Although Dettingen (1743) is the first “ Battle Honour ” carried on their standards, men of the Household Cavalry were in the field as early as the Monmouth Rebellion. Marlborough soon paid them the tribute of issuing them with breastplates only— ‘‘ The enemy will never see your backs, so you’ll want no protection for them! ” while the Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Waterloo, headed by that' stout prize-fighting Life Guardsman, Corporal John Shaw, gave the massed French cavalry the profoundest shock it bad ever experienced. Life Guards and Blues struggled with their horses, and even with the unaccustomed and rebellious camel, under the hot sun of Egypt; and pounded tirelessly after “ Brother Boojer ” across South Africa’s veldt. In the Great War, men from the Whitehall sentry boxes served alongside infantry of the line and a medley of dismounted Hussars and Lancers, doggedly plugging the gap in our tenuous, wavering battle lino until the new armies should arrive. They continued in various ways to play a worthy part to the very moment of “ cease fire.”

As for the Regiments of the Foot Guards—their chronicle is, in epitome, the history of British arms. The Grenadiers (as we have learned to call them) had hardly rubbed the bloom off their brand-new uniforms before. King Charles gave orders which sent them as temporary marines, into action with the Fleet. With some of their comrades of the Coldstream, they lent a hand to the support of that lonely, ofthelcagured bastion of Tangier, part of the dubious dowry brought to Charles by Catherine of Braganza. Coldstreamers were in the Low Countries even before the heyday of that doughty Guardsman, “ Corporal John.” fighting valorously under their commander. Lord Cutts, who was invariably referred to as “ The Salamander ” because of his love of hot fire.

The Guards played tlieir part in the capture of Gibraltar; subsequently proving their worth over and over again in the campaigns of Marlborough. To the Scots Guards fell the brunt on that bitter day at Fontenoy; although it was Lord Charles Hay. of the Grenadiers, who stepped foryard, flask in hand, to toast with gay impudence, the health of his enemies before turning to give the order for his own grinning ranks to open fife. There were Guards .battalions in America in the long and abortive war against Washington and his Colonials; while it fell to the Ist Guards to provide the conqueror of Canada in the person of Jeffery, Lord Amherst. “ THAT MUST BE THE GUARDS! ” The wars begotten of the French Revolution found the Guards, at the outset, comprising almost all that could be mustered in the way of a British Army to put into the field. And fighting stubbornly, year in, year out, they continued to maintain their proud traditions. On the day when the demoralised remnant which had stumbled on the heels of Sir John Moore in the retreat on Corunna, at last came in sight of their goal, the commander, watching the troops straggle by, shoeless, ragged, and starving, suddenly caught the sound of distant drums and the steady, rhythmic beat of marching feet. ‘‘That must be the Guards!” he cried; and presently they came swinging by, their drumsticks twinkling in unison, the sergeants on the flank keeping the footsore men in step—a miracle of discipline and regimental pride, after 18 terrible days of privation and discouragement under the menace of disaster.

And who does not respond to the story of the supreme moment of Waterloo, when, after vainly trying to wrest Hougomont from the Guards’ battalion who had held it throughout the day. Napoleon launched the serried mass of his “ Old Guard.” Advancing steadily, they swung towards the crest of the slope where General Maitland —once of the Grenadiers—-and the thin scarlet thread of his, brigade stoically lay waiting. A withering blast of fire and the head of the French column fell in confusion. “ Now, Maitland—now’s your time!” came the Iron Duke's voice; and as one man the stalwarts of the Guards leaped forward to sweep the wavering corns d’elite headlong down the slope and—Waterloo was won. The Crimea, with the “ Soldiers’ Rattle ” of the Alma, Egypt and South Africa, only served to reinforce splendid traditions of discipline and selfless gallantry which, with the years of Armageddon. earned for the Guards battalions, old and new, enduring fame.