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5th Royal Irish Lancers

Introduction

The 5th Lancers has had an interrupted regimental history. It was first raised in June 1689 at Inniskilling in Ireland to fight for King William III against James II at the Boyne and Aughrim.

It remained in Ireland throughout its life, excluding two deployments to the Low Countries between 1694 and 1713. On the first of these, the regiment captured three French kettledrums at Blenheim. At Ramillies in 1706, this regiment and the 2nd Dragoons captured two whole French regiments, leading to the regiment being renamed the Royal Dragoons of Ireland and given grenadier caps as part of its uniform.

Its duties in Ireland were mainly limited to policing, garrison duties and suppression of discontent, but separate billets and infrequent musters left the regiment in a state of disorganisation. This came to a head in the Irish rebellion in 1798, during which it was infiltrated by three rebels and accused of sympathies with their cause. The exact extent of those sympathies is still controversial, but the following year the regiment was moved from Ireland to Chatham in southern England and disbanded.

In the aftermath of the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny, the British Army needed more cavalry troops, so a new 5th Regiment of Dragoons was raised in 1858, though three years after its formation it changed from dragoons into lancers. However, the new unit was only ranked after the 17th Lancers due to its predecessor’s dishonourable disbandment.

This unit was mainly used on garrison duties in England and Ireland, though from 1864 to 1873 and 1888 to 1897 it was sent to India. It also sent two squadrons to fight in Egypt and the Sudan in 1885, charging with lances at Suakin. The whole regiment deployed to the Boer War in 1899, where its ‘C’ Squadron took part in the charge at Elandslaagte.

The regiment spent the pre-war period in England and Ireland. In 1902 Edmund Allenby became its commanding officer, rising to become its last colonel ten years later and winning fame for his Middle Eastern commands during the First World War.

In March 1914, the regiment was encamped at Curragh as part of 3rd Cavalry Brigade, which was mistakenly informed that its officers would have to impose home rule on northern Ireland or resign, in what became known as the Curragh Incident. Many of the brigade’s officers were Irish Protestants and so over 80 per cent of them initially offered to resign before the mistake was corrected. This correction also allowed the 5th Lancers to sail for the Western Front five months later.

The regiment remained on the Western Front for the rest of the war, fighting at Mons in both 1914 and 1918. In the 1918 action it suffered the very last British casualty of the war, Private George Ellison, who was shot by a sniper 90 minutes before the Armistice came into effect. It then deployed to Risalpur in India, where it was disbanded in 1921, only for a single squadron of the regiment to be re-raised the following year to merge with the 16th Queen’s Lancers to form the 16th/5th Lancers.

Key facts

Motto:

• ‘Quis Separabit?’ (meaning ‘Who Shall Separate Us?’)

Nickname:

• The Robin Redbreasts (after its full dress tunic)

Titles to date:

• James Wynne’s Regiment of Dragoons
• 6th Dragoons
• 5th Dragoons
• Royal Dragoons of Ireland
• 5th Regiment of Dragoons
• 5th (or Royal Irish) Regiment of Dragoons
• 5th (or Royal Irish) Regiment of Dragoons (Lancers)
• 5th (or Royal Irish) Lancers
• 5th (Royal Irish) Lancers
• 5th Royal Irish Lancers
• 16th/5th Lancers
• 16th/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers
• 5th Lancer Squadron, The Queen’s Royal Lancers

 16th The Queen’s Lancers

Introduction

The regiment was the British Army’s second-ever light cavalry regiment, raised in imitation of the European light cavalry regiments Britain had fought against and alongside early in the 18th century.

It was raised in southern England on 4 August 1759 by John Burgoyne, a cavalry officer and society figure. He commanded the regiment for the next 16 years and later became famous for his campaigns in the American Revolutionary War.

Two years after its formation it was used for raiding parties on the French coast, but its first major foreign deployment came in 1762, when it was sent to aid Britain’s Portuguese allies against France and Spain. Its conduct there won it the name ‘The Queen’s’ after King George III’s wife and consort Queen Charlotte as well as the privilege of using her cypher as part of its own badge.

Its next engagement was in Canada and north America from 1776 to 1779, where it and the other light cavalry role proved useful against the American Revolutionary army’s guerrilla tactics. However, that posting left it so depleted that its few remaining men were drafted into the 17th Light Dragoons and its officers sent back to England to recruit.

By the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars the 16th was back up to strength and from 1793 to 1796 it operated in northern Europe. The regiment’s next foreign posting followed in 1809 to 1814 to Spain and Portugal, where it lost 309 men and fought at Talavera, Salamanca and Vittoria. At Waterloo the regiment managed to cover the withdrawal of the Heavy Brigade after the latter charged too far from its own lines.

The post-war period saw the regiment in Ireland for five years then to Sheffield for a year, during which time they were renamed lancers. That time also saw the regiment express its loyalty to Caroline, King George IV’s estranged wife and queen consort. Legend has it this so infuriated George that he posted the regiment to India in 1822 as a result. That deployment lasted 24 years and saw the regiment serve in the Punjab, Gwalior and the First Afghan War (1839-42).

Its first Indian posting culminated in the First Sikh War (1845-46), during which one of its squadrons charged an enemy cavalry force ten times its numbers at Aliwal before going on to rout the artillery and infantry behind them. It had two more long postings to India and the North-West Frontier from 1865 to 1876 and 1890 to 1899, interspersed with garrison duty in Britain and Ireland. In 1877 the 17-year-old William Robertson joined the regiment as a private, later becoming the only British soldier ever to rise from private to field marshal.

The regiment joined 3 Cavalry Brigade in South Africa from 1900 to 1902, sailing back to home service before deploying to France as part of the same brigade in August 1914. By then the regiment was commanded by Hubert Gough, whose first commission had been in the 16th Lancers in 1889. It remained on dismounted duties in the trenches of the Western Front for the whole war and only returned to horseback in March 1918.

After the war it was redeployed to police the former Ottoman province of Syria, now a British Mandate, before moving on to India in 1921. It was still there a year later, when it was merged with the 5th Royal Irish Lancers to form the 16th/5th Lancers.

Key facts

Motto:

• ‘Aut Cursu Aut Cominus Armis’ (meaning ‘Either in the Charge, or Hand to Hand’)

Nickname:

• The Scarlet Lancers (all other light cavalry regiments switched from scarlet to blue tunics in 1846, but this regiment retained them after a direct petition to Queen Victoria)

Titles to date:

• 16th Regiment of (Light) Dragoons
• Burgoyne’s Light Horse
• 2nd (or The Queen’s) Regiment of (Light) Dragoons
• 16th (or The Queen’s) Regiment of (Light) Dragoons
• 16th (The Queen’s) Regiment of (Light) Dragoons (Lancers)
• 16th (or Queen’s) Lancers
• 16th (The Queen’s) Lancers
• 16th The Queen’s Lancers
• 16th/5th Lancers
• 16th/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers
• 16th Lancer Squadron, The Queen’s Royal Lancers

16th/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers

Officers’ cap badge, 16th/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers, c1980
NAM. 1994-01-89

Introduction

This unit was formed as the 16th/5th Lancers in 1922 by amalgamating the 16th Queen’s Lancers and the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, then both in India.

The 5th Royal Irish Lancers had been disbanded the previous year, so it was re-raised as a single squadron especially for the amalgamation. It had been dishonourably disbanded between 1799 and 1858, putting them 18th, not 5th, in the cavalry order of precedence. This is why they took second place in the new regiment’s title.

The new unit was posted back to England in 1926 and remained there until 1937, when it returned to India. It was still there on the outbreak of the Second World War (1939-45) and still a mounted regiment. It thus sailed for England in January 1940 to mechanise.

The regiment initially provided motorised machine-gun troops to defend Britain against possible German invasion in the autumn of 1940. Once that threat had lessened, it was switched to train on Valentine and Matilda tanks in November 1940. It deployed to Tunisia in November 1942, where it was re-equipped with Sherman tanks the following year. It then fought at Kasserine and in the final capture of Tunis.

16th/5th Lancers at the Tidworth Tattoo, 1929
NAM. 1984-01-84-17

The regiment landed at Naples in January 1944, but the terrain was ill-suited to armoured warfare. By the time the regiment fought in the Apennines it was primarily operating as infantry. Even so, by the German surrender in Italy in May 1945 the 16th/5th Lancers had pushed the furthest west of any regiment in the 8th Army.

It spent its first post-war months as occupation troops in Austria, dealing with refugees and reconstruction. In 1947 Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth became the regiment’s colonel-in-chief and in 1948 it deployed to Egypt for five years.

Between 1945 and 1993 the regiment deployed to West Germany seven times. In 1954 it was renamed the 16th/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers, taking the ‘Queen’s’ element from the 16th Lancers and the ‘Royal’ element from the 5th Lancers. The regiment as a whole spent two years in Northern Ireland from 1971, while individual squadrons were also posted to Hong Kong, Aden and Bahrain as well as to United Nations peacekeeping missions in Cyprus in 1973 and Beirut in 1984.

The regiment’s last major engagement as an independent unit was the First Gulf War (1990-91). Three years later it was amalgamated with the 17th/21st Lancers to form The Queen’s Royal Lancers.

Key facts

Motto:

• ‘Aut Cursu Aut Cominus Armis’ (meaning ‘Either in the Charge, or Hand to Hand’ – inherited from 16th Lancers)

Titles to date:

• 16th/5th Lancers
• 16th/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers
• 16th Lancer Squadron, The Queen’s Royal Lancers