CUSTOMS OF THE REGIMENTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 24 October 1942, Page 6

CUSTOMS OF THE REGIMENTS

Many of the customs cherished by individual regiments of the British Army are connected with dress. For instance, there are 6 regiments that wear red roses in their hats on Minden Day because they plucked roses from a garden and stuck them in their hats as they went into action at Minden in 1759. Among the odd things that otherregiments wear, perhaps the best known, because it is so conspicuous, is th<? “flash” of 5 black ribbons that the Royal Welsh Fusiliers wear at the back of the collar. When the regiment returned from overseas in 1805 they were so proud to find that they alone of the British Army were wearing pigtails that they asked permission to wear the flash, which was meant to represent not the pigtail, but the black leather pouch in which the pigtail was housed so that it should not soil the uniform. Then, of course, there is the badge that the Gloucester Regiment wears at the back as well as at the front of their headgear because they beat off the invincible legion of French cavalry at Alexandria in 1801, fighting back to back. At Festubert in 1915, surrounded by the Germans, they repeated the same feat, and were allowed to wear a rather larger badge at the back. There is a belief that Highland

regiments took to wearing spats because they retreated so far to Corunna that their shoes wore out, and they had to bind up their feet with strips torn from their shirt tails. The same sort of custom, survives in the South Staffordshires. Here they incorporate a piece of brown canvas into their uniforms, indicating sackcloth and ashes, because in 1707 the regiment became completely forgotten about in the West Indies, and remained there for 50 years, getting untidier and untidier and more and more out of date. For a long time the Wiltshire Regiment wore buttons with dents in them as they ran out of ammunition at Carrickfergus Castle, and subjected the enemy to a fierce button barrage, which they followed up by hurling bricksThe Oxford and Bucks cherish a privilege dating from Dettingen, when some of the regiment, instead of advancing, went to the assistance of George 11, who had fallen off his horse. In return for this loyal act, and as the Sovereign had fallen off a white horse, the regiment has always been allowed to wear a white tie with its mess kit- Moreover, it was the action of this regiment in smearing mud over its white breeches which led to the introduction of khaki.— (Lt. Dan Petti ward, in the B-B.C. “Listener.”)