In 1992 the WRAC ceased to exist, with its serving members being transferred into the appropriate corps – one of the reasons why the Adjutant General’s Corps was nicknamed All Girls Corps. Many officers and soldiers felt that they would be competing with men on a very uneven playing field and, while the WRAC had its own brigadier, it took seven years for another woman to reach that rank. But there is now no doubt that women are combatant soldiers, and they carry arms at the Sovereign’s Parade at Sandhurst, passing-out parades in training regiments, and, of course, on operations.
Women served alongside men in mixed units long before the disappearance of the WRAC, and inevitably both sexes took advantage of the relaxed climate in some units. One contributor to the Army Rumour Service remembered that
the 68 Squadron R[oyal] C[orps] of T[ransport] lines were like a knocking shop, in particular block 14 … (More shacked up couples in block 14 than the married quarters). As the block NCO for block 14 I had to ensure each Thursday morning that the ‘ladies’ were removed to their own accommodation prior to the block inspection. I remember one morning WO1 (RSM) Carl King**h RCT carrying out the block inspection and all was going well until he opened the door to the drying room/kitchen and found one of the 68 Squadron girls dressed only in a very short dressing gown collecting all her dry bits and bobs from the tumble dryer. When questioned by Carl she said that block 14 had a more relaxed regime than the 68 Squadron blocks and she didn’t think anyone would mind and her boy friend who lived in the block at the time allowed her to visit his room any time she wanted and she had been in earlier and hoovered his bunk floor, etc. etc.
Another agreed: ‘68 Sqn accom 1987 … brilliant. I copped off with a WRAC and on the Sat morning went for a shower and was joined by another WRAC who chatted as she showered.’13
The spread of women across the army did not produce unparalleled lechery on exercises or operations. I commanded a unit with a small WRAC detachment and although there were undoubtedly romances, the rustling in the bushes was never audible. I imagined that I knew precisely what was going on, but when one of the company sergeant majors announced his engagement to a WRAC private (who resigned instantly) I was wholly surprised, though I admired his judgement. The army’s Values and Standards pamphlet makes it clear that ‘social misbehaviour’ can include ‘displays of affection which might cause offence to others’ as well as more obvious things like ‘taking sexual advantage of a subordinate’. When judging the impact of such behaviour, commanders are directed to apply ‘The Service Test’. This asks ‘Have the actions or behaviour of an individual adversely impacted or are they likely to impact on the efficiency or operational effectiveness of the Army?’14 Few would object to a sexual relationship between equals, although publicly sustaining such a relationship on operations might, because of the jealousy it could arouse, fail the service test. Similarly, a relationship (be it heterosexual or homosexual) between say, commissioned and non-commissioned personnel could easily fail the same test because of perceptions of unfairness that it might arouse.
In my experience male soldiers behave differently when women are around. They swear less, boast less and (sometimes but not always) drink less too. Two female medical orderlies, one a soldier and the other from the Royal Navy, have now won the MC for courage in treating wounded men in combat. It is probably too early for the British army to put women into the collective close-combat group where dynamics are so complex, but using women to support battle or employing female ‘singletons’ as fighter pilots does not raise the same concerns. I cannot say what Captain Plume might make of it all. He would probably prefer ‘to raise recruits the matrimonial way’, but I think that he would be wrong. Women have now proved that they can fight: they may not need to do so always, but fight they can.
IV
TRIBES AND TOTEMS
CHAPTER 17
THE REGIMENTAL LINE
THE ARMY IS still regimental, three hundred and fifty years after its birth. Officers and soldiers join a regiment or corps and most of them remain in it for the whole of their careers. Its off-duty iconography, as distinctive as the plumage of tropical birds, has become less common as the proportion of the population with army service shrinks. But it is still visible, from a striped tie here to lapel badge there, and on to the beret-and-blazer ensemble that has now become a route-marker along the road from RAF Lyneham, whence the bodies of repatriated personnel begin their journey to Oxford. These markings are sharply defined and jealously guarded. The Household Division tie, its broad navy blue and magenta stripes symbolising the royal family’s blue blood and the red blood shed on its behalf by the Guards, is worn by Foot Guards so that the upper half of the knot shows blue, and by the Household Cavalry in the reverse order.
Where else in the world would there be a website debate about the right of individuals to wear a particular tie? Happily the 1966 England World Cup footballer Jack Charlton (Coldstream Guards, National Service) the comedian Tommy Cooper (Royal Horse Guards in the Second World War), the cricket commentator Brian Johnston (who earned an MC with the Grenadiers), the photographer Patrick Lichfield (a Grenadier officer, 1959–62), the jazz musician Humphrey Lyttelton (who landed at Salerno with the Grenadiers, pistol in one hand and trumpet in the other), and newsreader Kenneth Kendall (Normandy with the Coldstream) all properly pass muster as legitimate wearers of this most iconic piece of silk.
The army of Charles II followed the pattern of the armies, royalist and Parliamentarian, that had fought in the Civil War. Regiments of horse and foot were named for their proprietary colonels, or ‘regimental colonels’ as I often call them in these pages. These gentlemen might have obtained regimental command in a number of ways. There was ‘raising for rank’, usually at the beginning of a war, when a colonelcy was given to an individual or city corporation that undertook to raise a regiment according to specified arrangements. Successful senior officers might hope for colonelcies as a reward for their work to date and, all things being equal, could move steadily up the Army List, towards ‘older’ and more distinguished corps as they went. It was once possible for an officer’s political attitude to lose him his colonelcy: in 1710 Marlborough’s supporters major generals Meredith, Macartney, and Honeywood were dismissed for drinking damnation to the new ministry. A colonelcy stood to make a man a reasonable income, largely by pocketing the difference between the government grants received for various regimental expenses and the money actually spent, but Wellington maintained, rather frostily, that his colonelcies had never been much use to him.
But throughout this process the government took great care to ensure that colonels were up to the job. There was no point in lavishing its patronage on incompetents, or in giving boobies influence, cascading down through their own regiments, that they could promptly misapply. Of course there were officers, with the full blast of patronage behind them, who scudded along merrily. Lord George Lennox, second son of the Duke of Gordon, got his first full colonelcy at the age of 24 in 1762. Most colonels were serious and experienced folk. The age at which a man might expect to be promoted depended on the size of the army. Of the 293 colonels appointed between 1714 and 1763 more than half had served for a quarter of a century before attaining colonelcies, and none had served for less than fourteen years. Nor was the post a sinecure. One colonel, warned by an inspecting team that his regiment was in an appalling state, agreed that he must take instruction from a sergeant major.
Naming regiments after their colonels – a common practice in continental armies – remained the practice in Britain until 1751, when numbers replaced names, partly because a rapid turnover of colonels could cause confusion. In 1702 Peter Drake was in the Duke of Marlborough’s Regiment of Foot, which ‘had been commanded by the Marquis [de Puisan], who in coming from Ireland to join his regiment was lost at sea: upon which it became General Seymour’s, and soon after Lord Marlborough’s; so that in less than five months we had three colonels’.1 A regiment’s seniority, stemming from the date of its raisin
g, had always been clear, with ‘older’ units less likely to be disbanded on the outbreak of peace and therefore giving safer billets for the career-conscious. Many historians understandably simplify the business by giving regiments numbers from the outset, but contemporaries were forced to remember that my Lord Tintinhull had been succeeded in his colonelcy by Sir George Baskingshark, on whose unexpected demise the regiment had gone to the Earl of Bosham, who now seemed to have developed a worrying cough.
A few regiments, early in their lives, adopted a name that set them apart from their fellows. In at least one case this reflected the danger of misunderstanding. The 3rd Foot had worn coats of stiff buff leather when in Dutch service in Queen Elizabeth’s time, and on joining the British army had ochre-coloured facings and unwhitened buff leather equipment. The regiment styled itself the Buffs early on in its history, and when, in 1743, George II saw a regiment with buff facings marching briskly onto the field of Dettingen he called out ‘Bravo! Bravo Buffs!’ An aide helpfully pointed out that this was actually Lord Henry Beauclerk’s Regiment (31st Foot) that also wore buff facings, and the King at once corrected his mistake, now crying ‘Bravo, Young Buffs!’ Thenceforth the 3rd styled itself Old Buffs to avoid confusion, and the 31st was nicknamed the Young Buffs. The following year the Buffs, whose colonel was then Lieutenant General Thomas Howard, were fighting alongside the Hon Sir Charles Howard’s Regiment (19th Foot) so that there were actually two Howard’s Regiments in the field. Each regiment unofficially defined itself by its facing colour, with the latter becoming the Green Howards and the former Howard’s Buffs.
The Earl of Dumbarton’s Regiment was soon termed the Royal Scots, and when the English and Scots armies were amalgamated with the Act of Union in 1708 it was indisputably the First of Foot, the British army’s senior line infantry regiment. The 2nd Foot, formed in 1661 to garrison Tangier, quickly took to styling itself the Queen’s Royal Regiment, and the 1st Royal Dragoons, formed the same year, were the Royals from the very start. In 1685 – the year of Sedgemoor – George Legge, Lord Dartmouth, formed a regiment based on two companies of the Tower of London Guard. It was originally designated the Ordnance Regiment, and was intended to guard the Tower-based train of artillery when it took the field. At this time infantry carried the matchlock musket, whose power-charge was ignited by a length of burning cord. This was an obvious hazard if there were barrels of gunpowder about, and so the Ordnance Regiment was issued with fusils, an early form of flintlock musket, whose charge was fired by the spark produced when flint struck steel. Regardless of its colonel’s name this new regiment was soon known as the Royal Fusiliers.
The fusilier title rapidly became honorific: the 23rd Foot emerged as the Welsh Regiment of Fusiliers in 1702 and, after distinguished performance under Marlborough, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in 1712. It eventually took to styling itself Royal Welch Fusilier. The archaic spelling of its name was officially approved in 1920 but had been used within the regiment for very much longer. The 21st Foot became the Royal Scots Fusiliers in the 1680s; the 87th, raised in 1793, became the Royal Irish Fusiliers in 1827; and the 5th Foot became the Northumberland Fusiliers in 1836. Other fusilier titles appeared with the 1881 amalgamations: the 20th became the Lancashire Fusiliers; the 27th (Innsikilling) was united with the 108th Madras Infantry to emerge as the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The integration of four more of the former East India Company’s European battalions into the British army saw the creation of two more Irish fusilier regiments: the Royal Munster Fusiliers, formed from two regiments of Bengal fusiliers; and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, formed from a Madras and a Bombay regiment. All these regiments were trained and equipped as line infantry, though they enjoyed dress distinctions – notably a fusilier cap, a fur or fabric cap often confused with a similar item worn by grenadiers – that set them apart from other regiments.
Just as the name fusiliers originated in a technical specialism, so the development of light troops, horse, and foot, saw title changes. We have already seen how green-clad rifle regiments, first the 60th and then the 95th, sprang up in response to the demands of North America and the development of Swiss-German expertise within the army. There were always suspicions, on the part of more conventionally minded officers, that issuing men with rifles, encouraging individual initiative, and putting them in green ‘jack-a-dandy’ uniforms, would see them – as Wellington put it acidly, ‘running about like lamplighters’.
The foundation of light infantry was a half-way house, with regiments retaining the red coats of the line but emphasising skirmishing skills. Though they still carried the infantry musket, it had the helpful addition of a backsight. The 43rd and 52nd Foot became light infantry when they were brigaded with the 95th Rifles at Shorncliffe in 1803 to form the Light Brigade that was to expand into the Light Division in the Peninsula. The 68th and the 85th became light infantry in 1808; the 51st and the 71st in 1809; and the 13th in 1822.
These reclassifications as light infantry reflected a regiment’s reputation and influence. For instance, the 51st had fought well in the Spanish Corunna campaign and Sir John Moore, doyen of light troops, had been a previous commanding officer. When the colonel of the regiment, Lieutenant General Morshead, asked that ‘in the event of any addition being made to the number of light battalions, the 51st might be included in that number,’ the adjutant general told him that the king ‘approved of the 51st Regiment being immediately formed into a Light Infantry Corps in all respects upon the same plan as the 43rd, 52nd, 68th, 71st, and 85th Regiments’.2 The one remaining conversion to light infantry, however, reflected exceptionally distinguished conduct in the field. In 1857 the 32nd Foot was in garrison in Lucknow, and was to be knocked about in the badly handled Battle of Chinhat. They lost the battle, newly married Lieutenant Colonel William Case (‘as fine an officer as ever stepped’) and about a third of his men. As the little force fell back on Lucknow, one of the 32nd’s privates, hit in the leg, told his mates not to bother with him. ‘I shan’t last long,’ he said, ‘and I would never be able to reach Lucknow.’ He loaded and fired steadily, one man against an army, until he was overwhelmed. The 32nd lost 11 officers and 364 men killed and another 11 officers and 198 men wounded at Chinhat and in the subsequent siege of the Residency at Lucknow, one of the epic deeds that helped avert the collapse of British fortunes in India. In May 1858 the regiment was informed that
Her Majesty, in consideration of the enduring gallantry displayed in the defence of Lucknow, has been pleased to direct that the 32nd regiment be clothed, equipped and trained as a Light Infantry Regiment from the 26th February last.
Her Majesty has also been pleased to command that the word ‘Lucknow’ shall be borne upon the Regimental Colour in commemoration of the enduring fortitude displayed in the defence of the Residency for 87 days.3
The most recent example of a tactical function naming a regiment came in 1942. In June 1940 Winston Churchill, impressed by the achievements of German parachutists, demanded the raising of ‘a corps of at least 5,000 parachute troops’, and so the Parachute Regiment came into being on 1 August 1942. Not all new wartime structures survived peace. Back in October 1915 the Machine Gun Corps had been raised to ensure the better handling of medium machine guns; previously these had been issued on a scale of two per infantry battalion or cavalry regiment. By the end of the war the Corps comprised over 6,000 officers and 118,300 men, but it was disbanded in 1922 and machine guns reverted to being a regimental asset. Part of the Corps’ problem was that it had no network of influential supporters who might have spoken on its behalf, and so it perished unlamented when retrenchment was at hand. It is best remembered today by Francis Derwent Wood’s nude statue, The Boy David – too close to the homoerotic for some tastes – at Hyde Park Corner, commemorating the Corps’ 13,791 killed.
In contrast, after 1945 the Parachute Regiment had well-placed friends. ‘Every man an Emperor’, proclaimed Field Marshal Montgomery, one of the dominant figures in the postwar army and colonel
of the regiment from 1944 to 1956. Its battlefield performance in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy and the Rhine was distinguished, with Arnhem becoming a classic example of a heroic failure whose lustre did much to obscure errors in the operation’s planning and execution. The Parachute Regiment survived post-war reductions, although for some years it had no permanent officer corps of its own. Like the modern SAS it took officers temporarily posted into its battalions from outside. Its position in the infantry’s formal hierarchy (midway between the Royal Irish Regiment and the Royal Gurkha Rifles) reflects its seniority in the line, but not its place in public affection. Ironically, it may very well be that large-scale parachuting into battle – the core skill around which the Second World War regiment was formed – no longer has much validity today. However, the regiment draws much of its esprit de corps, and at least a modicum of its fine combat performance, from a selection and training process that emphasises common challenges for all ranks. It provides a palpable sense of unity between past and present.
Just as the infantry defined some of its regiments by titles that reflected royal or regional connections, or the development of a particular skill – from skirmishing to parachuting – so the cavalry too, soon became less homogeneous. The regiments of horse that fought under Marlborough were cavalry proper. They carried a pair of pistols and a carbine, but saw mounted action – coming on sword in hand at a pretty round trot – as their real raison d’être. Dragoons, in contrast, began as mounted infantry, their name (indistinguishable from the word for dragon in French) probably deriving from the ‘fire-breathing’ musket they carried. In 1625 the musket was described as ‘a short piece with a barrel sixteen inches long of full musket bore, fitted with a snaphaunce or firelock’. Their horses were smaller (and thus cheaper) than those of conventional horse regiments, and their NCOs and men were paid less. In 1746 Britain began to convert her eight regiments of horse into dragoons to save money. To save their self-respect though, they were given the title ‘dragoon guards’ to make the downgrading less uncomfortable. Thus the King’s Own Regiment of Horse became the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards; the Princess of Wales’s Own Regiment of Horse converted to the 2nd Queen’s Dragoon Guards; and the 4th Regiment of Horse ended up as the 3rd Dragoon Guards; and so on until, in 1788, the 4th Irish Horse at last became the 7th (Princess Royal’s) Dragoon Guards.