1828
Seven officers and two hundred and eleven men joined from England in May, 1828. During the heavy rains many men were carried off by the cholera morbus; in the month of July alone the Sixth lost fifty-eight men from this disease. This was a year of general sickness all over India; but at no station did any regiment suffer so much as the Sixth on Colaba island; their loss being two officers and one hundred and twenty one men, and they sent sixty-two invalids to England.
1829
The very sickly state of the regiment, from its having been stationed during four monsoons at Bombay, occasioned it to be removed to the more healthy station of Poona in the Deccan: it embarked from Colaba on the 6th of February, 1829, landed at Panwell on the opposite coast in the evening, and marched for Poona, where it arrived on the 17th, and was stationed in the lines then recently occupied by the twentieth regiment. The health of the men began to improve rapidly, and in a few months the Sixth were one of the most healthy and efficient corps in India. In May one hundred and thirty-five volunteers from the forty-seventh regiment joined the Sixth in camp at Poona; and at the inspection, on the 10th of June, Major-General Sir Lionel Smith, K.C.B., expressed himself much gratified with the appearance and efficiency of the corps. The loss from disease during this year was thirty-two men.
1830
The condition of the regiment was also much commended by Sir Lionel Smith at the inspections in January and June, 1830. In July the flank companies were ordered to be completed to one hundred rank and file each, under the command of Captain Murphy, with the second or Queen's royal, and flank companies of the eleventh and thirteenth native infantry, the whole to be commanded by Colonel Willshire, to march against Ukkulcote; but this fort having surrendered to the troops under the President of Sattara (Lieut.-Colonel A. Robertson, the Resident at the court), the march was countermanded. In December the strength of the regiment was increased by the arrival at the camp at Poona of fourteen volunteers from the first, or the royals, and ninety-two from the eighty-ninth regiment. Its loss from disease this year was three officers and twenty-four men.
1831
At the inspections in January and June, 1831, Colonel Henry Sullivan, commanding the Poona division, expressed his unqualified approbation of the condition of the regiment. This year it was particularly healthy, its loss being only one officer and eight men; and when inspected in November, by Major-General Sir James Stevenson Barns, K.C.B., commanding the forces in the Bombay presidency, its appearance, discipline, efficiency, and general good conduct in quarters, were commended.
1832
The regiment remained at Poona during the year 1832, and on the 24th of May, 1832, His Majesty King William IV. was graciously pleased to confer upon it the title of Sixth, or Royal First Warwickshire Regiment of Foot[38]; at which time its facings were changed from yellow to blue.