FOREWORD
To read this record of the part played by the Buffs in the desperate fighting of the early months of the war, in turning the tide of the enemy’s success and in the crowning victories, fills me with pride.
No pen can adequately convey the true measure of the constancy and valour of those men who endured and fought through the daily hardships, the hourly perils, the nerve strain during darkness—and this under the conditions of modern warfare, in battles which lasted not hours but weeks, with the added horrors of high explosives, gas poisoning, flame throwers, tanks and machine guns, delay-action mines and other mechanical and inhuman devices. Through all these trials the spirit of the regiment—of the Men of Kent—never faltered, its certain hope of victory never wavered.
For over three hundred and fifty years the historic name and high traditions of the Buffs have been in the keeping of the generations of men who followed each other in one or other of the so-called Regular battalions; during the Great War eight battalions, including two Territorial, took the field, and six others served at home. No less than thirty-two thousand men passed through the ranks of the regiment, of whom over five thousand gave their lives for their King and Country. But in spite of the great increase of numbers, and in spite of all the new dangers and perils, there was no change in the spirit, no weakening in the sense of duty which have always animated the Buffs; new and old battalions alike maintained, and more than maintained, the glory of the name handed down to them.
The recital of those deeds, and a description of the character of the war and conditions in which they achieved them, cannot therefore but inspire those who come after them in the battalions of the Buffs; so that should they too in their generation be called on to pass through the fiery ordeal, they also may, in the faith of their fathers, pass through unshaken to final victory.
