Lancers, Fusiliers, Rats . . .: The ongoing glory of the British regiment

National Review, April 21, 2003 by Andrew Stuttaford

When the British, over 40,000 strong, arrived in the Persian Gulf, they brought more than troops, hardware, support staff, and supplies. There was history, too, in their baggage. One need look no further than the names of just some of the units now deployed in the war -- storied regiments with lineages that stretch back through the centuries, from Kuwait to Normandy, the Somme, the Crimea, and often far past.

The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (the successors of a regiment that served in Afghanistan, but in 1879-80) are in the Gulf for the war against Saddam, and so, to pick out but a few more, are the Black Watch (whose battle honors include, ahem, a "successful action" in Brooklyn, N.Y., against one George Washington), the Life Guards (who first saw action in 1685), and that enduring symbol of Churchill's defiance and determination, the Parachute Regiment.

Each British regiment usually specializes in a specific type of soldiering. There are, for example, artillery, infantry, armored, and engineering (the "sappers") regiments -- but when they go to war they are joined together in larger formations, "much like," a brigadier explained to me, "the way in which the different sections, woodwind, strings, and so on, are combined to make up an orchestra." This orchestra is one that often reprises the past: Much of the move across the sands towards Basra has been led by formations grouped together into the 7th Armoured Brigade, a unit that still wears the insignia of the "Desert Rat," that strange scrawny rodent that became a symbol of strange scrawny Monty's World War II triumphs in North Africa.

British history, it seems, is not ready to end quite yet. Who would have thought it? When, more than 20 years ago, the "task force," Margaret Thatcher's marvelous makeshift armada, returned from its Falklands victory to cheers, tears, and Union Jacks on the quayside, Brits were told that it was, at last, goodbye to all that. The curtain had fallen, chaps, and there was no time for an encore. The rascally, glittering, wicked, and glorious age of empire was finally done, finished, buried, and anathematized -- exchanged for the obligations of a grayer, more sober era.

And so, it seemed, was the British military. The downsized heirs of Kipling's rough-and-tumble conquistadors were destined now for the shrunken campaigns of a mid-sized European power, fighting budget cuts at home, terrorists in Belfast, and boredom in West Germany as they waited, and watched, and waited some more for the Red Army that never came.

After the Wall came down, so did the money that the U.K. was prepared to spend on its military. A defense "review," carrying the sort of bland, vaguely threatening name -- "Options for Change" -- that is more McKinsey & Co. than Sandhurst, saw the size of the army reduced by a little under one-third: to not much more than 100,000 men. Regiments were merged or disbanded, often with startlingly little sentiment. To take just one example, the 16th/5th Lancers, a regiment with roots that stretched back over 300 years, led the way into Iraq in February 1991, yet within two years found its proud name on the scrap pile, lost in a merger with little patience for the past.

Yet, somehow, the past has endured, taught in every recruit's basic training and nourished by a system that is the British army's greatest strength: the regiment. To borrow the words of Field Marshal Wavell, "The regiment is the foundation of everything." The concept of the regiment stems from the fact that recruitment was once organized on a local basis, but its survival as an institution owes a great deal to one crucial psychological insight: Men may enlist to serve their country, but they will fight hardest to protect their friends. Most British soldiers spend their entire career within the same regiment -- over the years it becomes their principal source of friendship, their clan, their community, almost a surrogate family.

This sense of community is intensified still further by the British army's perception of itself as a caste set somewhat apart from the rest of society. Currently the army is, as it has been for much of British history, made up entirely of volunteers. The notion of the citizen soldier has been rejected in favor of the creation of a smallish force of highly trained professionals. This professionalism is a source of enormous pride to the troops, something Donald Rumsfeld may have discovered if he paid heed to Sgt. McMenamy of the Queen's Royal Lancers in early March. After hearing misinterpreted reports that the defense secretary was considering either leaving the Brits behind or giving them a secondary role in the coming conflict, the sergeant (described by the London Times as an "intimidating figure") was quoted as saying: "We are second to none, so it's a bit cheeky to suggest we can't be trusted to fight in the front line." ("A bit cheeky," let's be clear, is a classic example of British understatement.)

Like any community, the regiment has its own institutional memory that, added to the shared experience of highly intensive training and active duty, binds together the current generation and develops a sense of collective identity far more effectively than abstract notions of patriotism ever could. Visit the headquarters of a British regiment, and there will almost certainly be a museum dedicated to its past campaigns; dine in its officers' mess and you will, in all probability, eat amid the portraits and the heirlooms of those who came before -- silver from India, perhaps, or a tattered banner from one of Napoleon's lost legions.