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

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The Army in South Africa – Troops returning Home". The Times. No.36893. London. 8 October 1902. p.8. Spinola switched his attention to Rhineberg which was defended by an English regiment under Sir Edward Cecil and a Scots regiment commanded by Sir William Edmonds, an officer who had risen from the ranks and was a well respected leader. He, unfortunately was killed in the siege. Prince Maurice was unable to reach Rhineberg in time and they were forced to surrender on 1st Oct 1606. Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). 31 March 1908 . Retrieved 20 June 2017. In 1858, the 2nd Battalion was stationed in Malta. Lieutenant John Cotter, Adjutant of the 2nd Buffs, [36] would shout "Steady, The Buffs!", a phrase which has entered common parlance. [4] The 1st Battalion saw action in the Taku Forts action during the Second Opium War as well as in the Perak War [37] while the 2nd Battalion saw action in the Anglo-Zulu War. [38]

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. Churchill, Winston L. Spencer (1898). The Story of the Malakand Field Force: an episode of frontier war, CHAPTER XII: AT INAYAT KILA. London, UK: Longmans, Green. These were the 3rd Battalion (Special Reserve), with the 4th Battalion at Northampton Street in Dover (since demolished) and the 5th Battalion at Newtown Road in Ashford (since demolished) (both Territorial Force) The Spaniards sued for peace in November 1762 and in June 1763 the Buffs sailed to Minorca which had been returned to the British. The French had occupied the island since 1756 when it was taken from the British and Admiral Byng was executed for failing to prevent it. The Buffs remained there for 8 years during which time they absorbed the men from the disbanded 91st Regiment. The Military Commandant of Minorca was John Crauford who governed in the absence of Governor Sir Richard Lyttelton. Crauford had become Colonel of the regiment in May 1763. The regiment returned to England in 1771 spending 4 years in the West Country. Among the soldiers in the 10th Battalion, one soldier showed bravery in the Battle of Épehy on 18 September 1918. This was Private Percy James Fellows, a Lewis gunner who was mortally wounded while facing the enemy. He was serving with the 230th Brigade of the 74th (Yeomanry) Division. He died of wounds suffered during the Final Advance in Artois on 13 October 1918. [81]During the Battle of Taku Forts, Private John Moyse was captured: he was later executed by Chinese soldiers for refusing to kow-tow to a local mandarin. His act of defiance was later immortalised in The Private of the Buffs, a poem by Sir Francis Hastings Doyle. [72] The 2nd Battalion had been in Istanbul since the end of the war but went to India in Nov 1919. In 1920 they were sent to Iraq which had been known as Mesopotamia, part of the Ottoman Empire, until 11th Nov 1920 when it became a League of Nations Mandate under British control and known as the State of Iraq. The Buffs were given the task of dealing with a Kurdish revolt. They were stationed in Kirkuk, 200 miles north of Baghdad but had to march huge distances over the desert persuading the rebels to remain peaceful. From Iraq they went to Aden for a year and then returned to the UK in April 1923.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the expression is a reference to the army regiment and means “hold on! keep calm! be careful!” No origin is given. An angler named Samuel Harwood used it in his “Thames Reminiscences,” which appeared in an April 1886 issue of Fishing, a journal published in London:By some accounts, an adjutant shouted the expression to a battalion of the Buffs while it was on parade in Malta in 1858. Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below. G.O. 41/1881 1 May 1881 amended by G.O.70/1881 1 July 1881. "X. The facings, and the Officers lace will be the same for all regiments belonging to the same Country (Royal and Rifle Regiments excepted), and will as follows: English Regiments: Facings – White, Pattern of Lace – Rose" Welcome to Steady The Buffs Militaria, for British, Colonial & Commonwealth Cap Badges, Collar Badges, Shoulder Titles and Cloth Insignia. The Dutch authorities decided to honourably discharge the English and Scots troops serving in the regiments and replace them with Netherlanders. Those Englishmen and Scotsmen who were prepared to swear the oath of allegiance to The Dutch republic would be re-admitted into the regiments. The discharged officers and men were given no assistance from the English government for their repatriation, so the English envoy Sir George Downing paid for their passage to England and gave them letters of recommendation.

We found an example in White City (2007), a memoir by the British writer Donald James Wheal of his childhood in World War II-era London. Bibliography for Introduction to Military History (Part1)". University of Kent . Retrieved 6 May 2016. The Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment) still has some exhibits at Beaney House, although most of the collection was subsumed into the National Army Museum in 2000. [66] [67] Colonels-in-Chief [ edit ]Norman E.H. Litchfield, The Territorial Artillery 1908–1988 (Their Lineage, Uniforms and Badges), Nottingham: Sherwood Press, 1992, ISBN 0-9508205-2-0, p. 110. The 1st Buffs were mobilised to join Wolseley's Egyptian expedition but it was all over by the time they reached Malta and they went to Ireland instead. In 1885 they were sent to Singapore while the 2nd Buffs were returning from Hong Kong. The 2nd were sent to Egypt for the Nile Expedition. They went up river to Aswan but the Dervishes had been defeated at Ginnis so after two debilitating months in the desert they returned to England, in April 1886. While the 2nd Buffs were in South Africa, the 1st Battalion remained in India but were sent to Aden in October 1903 where they made some fatiguing marches deep into the Protectorate to pursue rebellious tribesmen. They maintained a detachment of 2 companies at Dhala, a place with which the Buffs became acquainted again in 1958. They returned to England in Nov 1904 and met up with the second battalion at Dover. In 1906 they were granted the honour of having the HM King Frederik VIII of Denmark as their Colonel-in-Chief. From 1910 to 1914 they were in Ireland, first Dublin and then Fermoy where there was some trouble with Irish Republicans. We’ll examine the less obscure one first. “Steady, the Buffs!” means “Keep calm!” or “Steady on, boys!” and can be traced to the late 19th century. The Buffs arrived in Portugal on 1st Sep 1808 and sailed up the Tagus. Sir Arthur Wellesley had returned to England leaving Sir John Moore to advance into Spain with two thirds of the British army. The Buffs brought up the rear, escorting supply wagons, so that when Moore beat a hasty retreat towards Corunna the Buffs were left behind. The grenadier company, however, were with Moore and suffered the horror of the winter schlep over the mountains to Corunna. They fought with the rearguard, attached to the 20th Foot, and were evacuated to England where they arrived 'some 70 barefoot scarecrows' to join the 2nd Battalion. The remaining 9 companies of the Buffs stayed behind, guarding a large amount of money destined for Moore's troops. Lt-Col Richard Blunt managed to keep his regiment, and the money, safe from Napoleon and his marauding soldiers.

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 1st Battalion returned to Fermoy in Sep 1919 to be faced with the prospect of fighting against Sinn Fein militants. It was not simply a matter of peace keeping, and the violence escalated. By the time they left the country in Jan 1922 two soldiers had been killed. By other accounts, an officer cried, “Steady, The Buffs!” as the regiment was going into battle abroad. We haven’t been able to confirm either story. The battle of Albuhera was catastrophic for the Buffs and for other regiments, including the 57th (Middlesex) which earned the name 'Die-Hards'. Both regiments subsequently celebrated 16th May as Albuhera Day. Both the 1st and 2nd Battalions were involved in Montgomery's defeat of the German army in Egypt. The 1st Buffs, in the 8th Armoured Brigade, were in an inferno of fire as they eased their armoured regiments through the minefields.The 2nd were engaged in diversionary operations further south, and their scope widened as the battle pr Spagnoly, Tony and Smith, Ted (1999), Cameos of the Western Front: Salient Points Three: Ypres & Picardy 1914–18, Pen and Sword Books Ltd, ISBN 978-0850527902 (pp. 27–31) In 1961, it was amalgamated with the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment to form the Queen's Own Buffs, The Royal Kent Regiment, which was later merged, on 31 December 1966, with the Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment, the Royal Sussex Regiment and the Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge's Own) to form the Queen's Regiment. This regiment was, in turn, amalgamated with the Royal Hampshire Regiment, in September 1992, to create the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment (Queen's and Royal Hampshires). Sargent, Clem (1995). "The Buffs in Australia—1822 to 1827". Sabretache. Military Historical Society of Australia. 36 (1): 3–15. ISSN 0048-8933.