Battle Honours of the British Army / From Tangier, 1662, to the Commencement of the Reign of King Edward VII

by Charles Boswell Norman

Another noticeable omission in the list of India battle honours is "Nepaul." If we except the two campaigns of 1846 and 1849 against the Sikhs, that against the Gurkhas entailed the hardest fighting we have ever experienced in India. At the outset we met with more than one reverse, and suffered enormous losses, the casualties of the 53rd (Shropshire Light Infantry) alone totalling 21 officers and 428 of other ranks killed and wounded. A dismounted detachment of the 8th Hussars, 100 strong, lost 5 officers and 57 men. The result of the war was a lasting alliance with the kingdom of Nepaul, and the opening up to our Indian army of a field of recruits unsurpassed for heroism, discipline, and loyalty. The troops entitled to such a distinction would be the 8th Hussars, 17th (Leicesters), 24th (South Wales Borderers), 53rd (Shropshire Light Infantry), 87th (Royal Irish Fusiliers), and the 2nd Queen's Own Rajput Light Infantry.

The 55th (Border Regiment) have no distinction to record the loss of upwards of 100 men in the campaign in Coorg in 1834; nor the Leicesters for their still heavier losses at the siege and assault of the fort of Kamounah twenty-five years previously.

A reference to the chapter on the Indian Mutiny will show that there were but three battle honours (if I except the two given to the 45th Sikhs) granted for the three years' campaign—"Delhi," "Lucknow," and "Central India." Yet there were many regiments whose task was no less arduous, and whose services were as valuable, as those performed by the regiments which took part in the final capture of Lucknow. Hunting down bands of rebels during the hot weather was not the easiest part of the campaign, and the disarmament of disaffected native troops in the Punjab was a task of the heaviest responsibility. The services of the 13th (Somerset Light Infantry) at Azimghur, of the 24th (South Wales Borderers) at Jhelum, of the 27th (Inniskilling Fusiliers) at Peshawar, of the 81st (Loyal North Lancashire) at Lahore, brought decorations to the commanders and medals to the men, but to the regiments nothing to show the part they played in holding fast to our Indian Empire in the day of our darkest trouble.

Another fact in connection with the battle honours for the Mutiny is deserving of remark. The 32nd (Cornwall Light Infantry) have no special distinction to differentiate them from those regiments which shared in Sir Colin Campbell's final and comparatively bloodless capture of the city in March, 1858. The defence of Lucknow stands out as a feat apart, and must for ever remain one of the grandest episodes in our military history. A special clasp was granted with the medal, but no special battle honour.

The regiments which were with Sir George White bear the distinction "Defence of Ladysmith"; the Loyal North Lancashire, "Defence of Kimberley"; the 13th (Somerset) have a mural crown, with the word "Jelalabad"; and the regiments that were with Eliott at Gibraltar have the castle and key, with a distinctive motto, as emblematic of its defence; but the Cornwall Light Infantry bear the single word, "Lucknow," with no emblem commemorative of that heroic defence which thrilled our country half a century ago, and which made the name of Havelock a household word wherever the English language is spoken.

I have alluded to the two special honours awarded to the 45th Rattray's Sikhs for the Mutiny—"Defence of Arrah" and "Behar." The gallant defence of Arrah by a handful of Sikhs, under the leadership of a Bengal civilian, Wake, was a striking episode in a campaign in which heroic actions were of daily occurrence; but the award of this battle honour to the 45th Sikhs brings out into strong relief the omission to grant a like honour to the 2nd Queen's Own Rajput Light Infantry for the no less heroic defence of Saugor. Saugor was in the centre of a district seething with revolt. The garrison of Jubbulpore, the nearest cantonment, had fallen away, murdering their officers, and the other sepoy battalion in Saugor also joined the mutineers; but the 31st Bengal Infantry (now the 2nd Queen's Own Light Infantry) stood firm. They had every inducement to abandon their trust. The neighbouring Princes had thrown in their lot with the rebels, and offered tempting rewards for the rupees that lay in the treasury and the ammunition that was stored in the arsenal. There was a large number of Christian women and children in the fort, whose surrender was demanded. The 31st not merely defended these, but on more than one occasion sallied out and attacked the rebels, and on one memorable day returned with a couple of guns. This was not a defence of a week, as at Arrah. The Saugor garrison was isolated from the month of July, 1857, when the Mutiny reached its head, until its relief by the Central India Field Force, under the command of Sir Hugh Rose, in January, 1858.

I am well aware that the 32nd (Cornwalls) and the 31st Bengal Native Infantry were respectively made Light Infantry regiments for the defence—the one of Lucknow, the other of Saugor; but memories are short. Few outside their own ranks know whence their bugles came; indeed, in this very year (1910) a leading Service paper, in answer to a correspondent, asserted that the 32nd were made light infantry in the year 1832! In addition to the special battle honours, "Defence of Lucknow" and "Defence of Saugor," all regiments which took part in the suppression of the great rebellion in India should be awarded the battle honour "India, 1857-58."

For upwards of half a century a picked body of native troops kept watch and ward over the North-West Frontier of our Indian Empire, waging numberless campaigns against the independent tribes who people the borderland between our frontiers and those of Afghanistan. In many of these border wars the fighting has been hard, the losses very severe, but until the year 1897 no battle honour was awarded for these services. Three medals have been issued, with clasps for close on fifty different expeditions, but the regiments of the old Punjab Frontier Force, which held that border for fifty years, and which in so doing lost upwards of 2,000 officers and men, have never been authorized to add to their colours the first two names of their old and well-known title.

The distinction "Punjab Frontier" was subsequently conferred on a number of regiments which were present in one of the more recent campaigns. In the Umbeyla Expedition of 1863 the total casualties were 36 officers and 1,080 men killed and wounded, the heaviest falling on the 71st (Highland Light Infantry) and 101st (now Munster Fusiliers), and the three magnificent Punjab regiments commanded by Majors Ross, Brownlow, and Keyes. At Umbeyla the Highland Light Infantry suffered more heavily than in the Crimea and Mutiny combined, but it bears no battle honours to remind it that it lost five officers killed in the Boneyr Hills.

Here it may not be out of place to call attention to the marvellous success that attended the Punjab Frontier Force as a training-school for officers of the Indian army. It was formed immediately after the conquest of the Punjab in 1849, the first commander being Brigadier Hodgson, a grandson of the Studholme Hodgson who took Belleisle in 1761. It was raised partly from the tribes beyond our border, partly from the disbanded soldiers of the Sikh army, partly from men of the Punjab, and was officered by selected Captains and subalterns from the three presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. It was composed of five regiments of cavalry, two mountain and two field batteries, ten battalions of infantry, and the famous Corps of Guides. Not only did it bear the brunt of every expedition on the Punjab Frontier, but its regiments fought in Burmah in 1852 and in the Mutiny with rare distinction. In the half-century of its existence it has seen three of its members reach the highest rank in the army—that of Field-Marshal—fifteen have been raised to the dignity of Grand Cross of the Bath, and sixteen have won the Victoria Cross. The young officers of the Punjab Force were taught to act on their own responsibility. There was a total absence of red tape from the first, and the result was the upgrowth of a school which did not a little to the saving of our Indian Empire in the dark days of 1857. Subalterns had found themselves in command of regiments, Captains at the head of brigades of all arms, and when the Mutiny broke out John Lawrence had at his hand a body of youngsters whom he employed to raise regiments on a nucleus of their own corps. The squadrons that Probyn and Watson (both these officers won the Victoria Cross, and have lived to wear the Grand Cross of the Bath) took down to Delhi expanded into regiments. As with the cavalry, so with the infantry. In the China War of 1860 practically the whole of the native troops employed at the front had been raised by officers of the Punjab Irregular Force, and in the Abyssinian War, seven years later, the Bengal Brigade was composed of regiments raised in the same manner. The regiments which served under the great Duke in Spain were authorized to bear the word "Peninsula" on their colours and appointments, even though they had not been present at any of the general actions for which a special distinction was conferred. It would be a graceful act to recognize the service of the Punjab Force by granting the battle honour "Punjab Frontier, 1849-1897," to each regiment of the old Frontier Force which for that long fifty years bore the brunt of the fighting from Cashmere to Baluchistan.