Steady the Buffs!: A Regiment, a Region, and the Great War

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Oxford’s earliest example is from Rudyard Kipling’s The Story of the Gadsbys (1888), but we’ve found a civilian usage that’s at least two years older. He turned off to the left, and I followed him as well as I could. Squish—squash! This was a sort of exercise in which I did not excel. Oh, why had I not brought my goloshes? But steady, the Buffs, what had become of my leg! Down a drain, or something, by all that was ludricrous. I pulled it out as fast as I could, but only to find I was minus a shoe.” For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Sir Francis, although suffering from a head wound, was given the task of defending Ostend and supplied with 12 companies of English and 7 Dutch companies. They sailed to Ostend, landing on 11th July and began strengthening the defences. On 23rd July reinforcements arrived; 1,500 fresh troops from England. Vere, however was still unwell and had to be taken to Zealand to recover. During his absence the Spanish began the siege with a non-stop bombardment. The garrison replied with their own artillery but had to gather themselves into two plots of ground within the town where they worked incessantly to dig themselves in and build defensive mounds around the perimeters. The Spanish fired arrows to which were attached letters offering money to the soldiers to change sides and fight for Archduke Albert, but this offer was treated with contempt. On 20th August there was a further reinforcement of 2,000 English troops which managed to get into Ostend. Prince Maurice, meanwhile, had been occupied with the siege of Rhineberg but this was captured and he was able to send 20 companies of Scots, French, Walloons and Frieslanders. These arrived on 23rd Aug and the defenders felt confident enough to make sorties against the besiegers. When Oliver Cromwell died in September 1658 the nation invited Charles II to return to England and take the throne. Before leaving the continent in 1660 Charles spent a short time in the Hague and was met by the English regiments. But a few years after the King's return there was, in 1664, an outbreak of hostilities between England and the Netherlands. The Buffs also raised many more battalions during the war, mainly for home defence or as training units. None, save the 7th and 11th Battalions, saw active service overseas. The 7th and 11th Battalions were raised in 1940 and were converted to the 141st Regiment Royal Armoured Corps and the 89th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery in 1941 due to the shortage of armoured troops and artillery in the British Army. [58] [59] Post-War [ edit ] Badge of the Buffs as shown on the grave of Private P.M. Godden, who died in 1947, at Stanley Military Cemetery, Hong Kong Hart, Lieut.-Col. H.T. (1858) The New Army List and Militia List, No. LXXIX, 1st July 1858. London: John Murray. p. 76 Colonel Morgan, as he is referred to at this point of the history, was recalled to England with 700 men of his regiment. They were reviewed by Queen Elizabeth at St James's Palace and then 400 of them were sent to Ireland to deal with Popish insurgents. They were 'the first good harquebusiers seen in England, and their activity and dextrous use of fire-arms brought the musket and harquebus into more general use in Her Majesty's dominions.'From Singapore the 1st Buffs went to India, in Jan 1887 but it was not until March 1895 that they went on campaign on the Northwest Frontier with Sir Robert Low's 1st Division. The aim of the expedition was to relieve Chitral, a fort that was garrisoned by Sikhs and Kashmiri levies, besieged by Pathan tribesmen. The Buffs went by train to Nowshera and faced a march of 120 miles to Chitral. In the event they were beaten to it by a column of Sikhs who approached from the east but they suffered a gruelling trudge through hostile mountains in freezing temperatures with only a greatcoat to sleep in at night. They were accompanied by a company of Seaforths and 4 companies of Gurkhas and reached the fort with much-needed supplies after a 26 day march. Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malplaquet, Dettingen, Guadeloupe 1759, Douro, Talavera, Albuhera, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, Toulouse, Peninsula, Punniar, Sevastopol, Taku Forts, South Africa 1879, Chitral, Relief of Kimberley, Paardeberg, South Africa 1900–02 When the Territorial Army was reformed in 1947 the 4th and 5th Buffs were merged into a single battalion. In 1956 410 (Kent) Coast Regiment, Royal Artillery, was converted to the infantry role and became 5th Buffs. [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] The 5th Battalion was reformed in 1939 as a 2nd Line duplicate of the 4th Battalion when the Territorial Army was doubled in size. Initially, the 5th Buffs was assigned to the 37th Infantry Brigade, part of the 12th (Eastern) Infantry Division, which was a 2nd Line duplicate of the 44th (Home Counties) Division. However, on 26 October 1939, it was transferred to the Division's 36th Infantry Brigade in exchange for the 2/6th East Surreys. [54] [55] The 5th Buffs, along with the 6th and 7th Royal West Kents, remained in the 36th Brigade for the rest of the war. Like the 2nd and 4th Battalions, it served with the BEF in France in 1940 and fought in the Battle of France and was evacuated at Dunkirk. The 12th Division suffered heavy casualties due mainly to most of the men having little training and the division having no artillery or support units. After returning to England, the division was disbanded in July 1940, due to the casualties it had sustained. In 1942, the 36th Brigade was assigned to the newly raised 78th Division and took part in Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa, followed by the campaign in Tunisia, where the 78th Division, as part of the British First Army, distinguished itself during the crucial capture of Longstop Hill. [56] The division then fought in the Sicilian Campaign, as part of the British Eighth Army. The 5th Buffs and the rest of 78th Division then took part in the fighting in Italy and served there until the 1945 Offensive. [57]

After Ireland they assembled at Woolwich from where they marched through the City of London in full splendour, but were then given the unglamorous task of escorting convicts on the long voyage to the other side of the world. They left in detachments one after the other until the whole battalion was in Australia by August 1823. They were mostly in New South Wales, not only guarding prisoners but hunting escapees and other outlaws. Their CO William Stewart was the Governor of the state briefly in December 1825. The dispersed detachments came together in 1827 and those who chose to were then shipped off to India. Some chose to stay as settlers including Major Archibald Innes who founded the town of Glen Innes. Prince Maurice besieged Sluys and captured it with a force that included 6 companies of English and 7 of Scots. But at Ostend the town was in ruins and the war there had cost 120,000 lives. An assembly of the of the States of the United Provinces reluctantly decided to give it up and at the beginning of September 1604 the 4,000 defenders marched out with drums beating and Colours flying. The inhabitants also quit the town except for one old man and two women.

Second World War

Glozier, Mathew (2001). Scotland and the Thirty Years' War, 1618–1648; Steve Murdoch et al. Brill. p.126. ISBN 978-9004120860. The negotiations between the courts of England and Spain respecting the marriage of Prince Charles to the Infanta were broken off in early 1624 and the States were able to obtain fresh troops from England. That summer 4 regiments of 1,500 men each were raised and sent to Holland under the command of the Earls of Oxford, Essex and Southampton, and Lord Willoughby. The 4th Buffs had spent most of the war in Bareilly, northern India, and in March 1927 the 1st Battalion were stationed there for more than 3 years. There are a number of houses in Kent with the name 'Bareilly' as a result of this pleasant posting. In Oct 1930 they went to Burma, stationed at Maymyo, to help deal with a rebellion but there was little action involved. However, they remained in Burma until 1935 when they returned to India. The services of several of the Scots companies were dispensed with in 1613 and they went to Sweden to fight for King Gustavus Adolphus. This became the nucleus of the Royal Scots.

Naval and Military Intelligence". The Times. 13 September 1890. p.7. The regimental colours will in future be buff instead of white; and the Commander-in-Chief has directed that the facings of the regiment be described in the Queen's Regulations and the Army List as buff. The casualties amongst Churchill's officers were 4 killed, 4 wounded and 5 taken prisoner. The numbers for the other ranks are not given. Macaulay's history says of the battle of Landen that only Waterloo and Malplaquet exceeded it in numbers of dead: "During many months the ground was strewn with skulls and bones of men and horses and with fragments of hats, shoes, saddles and holsters. The next summer, the soil, fertilised by 20,000 corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies." The Allied losses in fact, were 19,000. The French lost 9,000 and were too exhausted to pursue William's retreating army.The Freemasons Are the Oldest Fraternal Organization in the World. Freemasons belong to the oldest fraternal organization in the world, a group begun during the Middle Ages in Europe as a guild of skilled builders. Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Catch Phrases calls it an expression “of self admonition or self-adjuration or self-encouragement” that originated in the military. Its origin? Partridge says only that it comes “from an incident in the history of the East Kent Regiment.”