The regiment that made the county proud (From The Northern Echo)

The regiment that made the county proud

5:21pm Friday 10th December 2010 in Durham Memories

FIELD Marshal Montgomery of Alamein famously said of the Durham Light Infantry: “There may be some regiments as good, but I know of none better.”

Even though the regiment no longer exists, thousands across the north of England would endorse his sentiment and point out that the spirit which made the Durhams so great lives on today in the young soldiers who so proudly wear the successor to the Durhams’ famous bugle cap badge.

The story of the Durham Light Infantry, the “Faithful Durhams” as they became known, one of Britain’s most famous and highly-decorated Army regiments, began far away from the county 250 years ago, during the reign of King George II.

He was the last English ruler to lead an Army into battle, at Dettingen, in 1743.

In 1755, Britain was just becoming embroiled in what is now regarded as the first global conflict, the Seven Years War, which was a fearful struggle that coursed across Europe and, inevitably, spilled over into its overseas colonies.

The great powers of Austria, France, Russia, Saxony, Sweden and, eventually, Spain were ranged against Great Britain, Hanover, Prussia and Portugal.

Although all of these countries had individual scores to settle, many of which had been rumbling on for years, it was in North America and India where the first shots were fired in anger, as the struggle for colonial supremacy between France and Great Britain came to a bloody head.

One of the results of the outbreak of hostilities was that Britain urgently needed more fighting men, who were recruited and formed into extra battalions for existing regiments.

Among these new units was one which would, ultimately, carry the name of the Durham Light Infantry, but that would be a long time in the future, and after several changes of name.

Raised at Leicester in September 1756, it started life as a second battalion for the 23rd Regiment of Foot which, in 1758, was renamed the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers.

On August 31, 1757, the regiment had been required by the War Office to send 80 of its men to reinforce the British Army in North America and to replace the soldiers with new recruits as quickly as possible.

On April 22 the following year, the 2nd Battalion, having by then been separated from the 23rd, became independent and was designated the 68th Regiment of Foot, the name it carried until 1782.

Between its formation in 1756 and 1758, it had been garrisoned in 13 towns in the south of England.

In 1782, its principal officer since 1758, Lt Col John Lambton, of the Coldstream Guards, asked for it to be officially associated with his home county of Durham – he lived in Lambton Castle and was MP for Durham City – so from then until 1812 it was known as the 68th (Durham) Regiment of Foot.

After 1812 and until 1881, it was called the 68th (Durham – Light Infantry) Regiment of Foot, but not until 1881 did it shed the “68th” element of its name to become the 1st Battalion, the Durham Light Infantry.

Between June and September 1758, the 68th took part in two amphibious expeditions, descents as they were called, against the French coast.

To call them simply raids would be a huge understatement because they were, by today’s standards, invasions.

The purpose of these incursions was to keep French troops busy defending their own shores rather than allowing them to be sent as reinforcements to America and Germany.

At the beginning of May 1758, the 68th marched from Dover to Portsmouth and travelled by boat to Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, where the landing force was being assembled.

Within two weeks, 13,000 British soldiers were ready under the command of the 3rd Duke of Marlborough, and the Army boarded between May 25 and 28.

After a considerable amount of manoeuvring and delay, the British fleet dropped anchor in the Bay of Cancale, 13km east of the French port of St Malo, in Brittany.

By June, nearly the entire British infantry contingent had landed and marched towards St Malo, but the 68th remained in the harbour town of Cancale.

In 1770, the journal of an anonymous soldier of the 68th was published with his memories of this “descent”.

He reports that the 68th, and the other British unit in Cancale, were kept busy building defences until they, and the rest of the British force, were ferried back to their ships and transported back to Portsmouth and Cowes because a large French force had been sighted near St Malo.

While on French soil, they had succeeded in inflicting a lot of damage to the area.

In a second attack, the 15- year-old soldier tells that the 68th were off Cherbourg on August 6 and, when the British went ashore the following day, the town surrendered, the port installations were destroyed and the troops soon returned to their ships, which arrived in St Lunaire Bay, near St Malo, on September 3.

Yet again, the British were unable to take the town and the 68th Regiment journalist warned his officers that some captured French deserters had told him that a large French force was to arrive imminently.

The officers failed to follow up this intelligence and it was not until September 11 that the British began to withdraw and return, in no great hurry, to their boats.

The witness journal continues: “The French army appeared and, in a short time, they began to cannonade us, which we couldn’t return having no artillery on shore, but the shipping did for us all that was possible to be done.

“By the time our regiment began to embark, the shot flew both thick and hot and every boat made for the first ship they could reach.

“The boat that I was in got on board one of the bomb ketches, who the minute we came alongside of her discharged a 13in mortar, the shell of which I saw fall in the middle of a troop of French horse.

“By this time, the action became general among the troops we had on shore, and a dreadful scene it was, to see so many brave fellows lose their lives and we not able to give them any manner of assistance.”

The British retreat was an unmitigated disaster, which culminated in the 1st Foot Guards and many grenadiers retreating into the sea, their only possible escape route, where 800 were killed and 700 taken prisoner.

The 68th spent the winter at Rochester and, in April 1759, took up garrison duty on the island of Jersey.

For some reason, many of the accounts of the early years of the 68th miss out the next four years of their history, or simply comment that they were in Tynemouth or in Ireland, which a few of the men might have been.

The truth is that in the spring of 1760, the regiment had its first true overseas posting when 600 soldiers were shipped out on four transport vessels from Gosport to reinforce the garrison of Guadeloupe, in the Leeward Islands, West Indies, claimed and occupied by France since 1674 but, by then, in the hands of the British.

In charge of the convoy was Rear-Admiral Holmes on board HMS Cambridge.

The ships eventually reached Barbados, where they were joined by other British ships to create a fleet of 100 vessels, which sailed past Martinique, Dominique and the Saintes Islands, dropping anchor on May 7, 1760, off the town of Basse-Terre on the island of Guadeloupe.

The men of the 68th disembarked and paraded the next day in front of the governor’s house before being split into three groups, each of 200 men, to be attached to the three regiments already stationed on the island.

The first 200 joined the 63rd Foot, who were stationed at nearby Fort Royal, while the remaining 400 returned to their troop transports to be taken, accompanied by HMS Antigua, to their postings elsewhere on Guadeloupe.

On the evening of May 13, the 400 men reached Fort George, where half of them went ashore. The last 200 of the 68th landed at Petitbourg, opposite Grande-Terre, to join what was left of the 4th King’s Own Regiment of Foot, which had lost nearly 300 men since the island had been surrendered to the British, and had fewer than 50 men fit for duty.

The 68th remained on Guadeloupe for more than three years, not returning to England until August 23, 1763.

The anonymous writer of the journal was discharged from the Army at the age of 20 on September 28, by which time he, and the other Durhams, were seasoned veterans of overseas conflict.