The history of the 24th Regiment (later the South Wales Borderers) is certainly one of the most interesting stories of any regiment in the British army. Throughout its long history, going back to 1689, it had been an exceptionally courageous regiment and also exceptionally unlucky. In 1694 it had taken part in the ill-fated descent on Brest. In the War of Jenkins’s Ear and the attack on Cartagena it lost more than half its number from disease in the West Indies. In 1756 it was forced to surrender to the French at Minorca. The entire regiment was captured in the American War. Forty-six per cent of the second battalion were casualties at the Battle of Talavera in the Peninsula War — more than any other British regiment engaged. In 1810 about 400 men, nearly half the regiment, were captured by the French while on troopships from South Africa bound for India.
Perhaps it is as well to outline here the story of this gallant but ill-starred regiment after the Battle of Chilianwala. The catastrophe which overtook it in the Zulu War will be described later. In World War I it was in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, and on 3 December 1917 the second battalion marched out of the lines in France with only two officers, the doctor and seventy-three men. In World War II a battalion was captured by the Germans near Tobruk and, naturally, it was part of the unfortunate expedition to Norway in 1940 — even the ship carrying them struck a rock and sank.
Byron Farwell, Queen Victoria’s Little Wars, 1972
August 18, 2013
QotD: The unluckiest regiment in the British army
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