Royal West Kents

The Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment was a line infantry regiment of the British Army based in the county of Kent in existence from 1881 to 1961. The regiment was created on 1 July 1881 as part of the Childers Reforms, originally as the Queen's Own (Royal West Kent Regiment), by the amalgamation of the 50th (Queen's Own) Regiment of Foot and the 97th (The Earl of Ulster's) Regiment of Foot. In January 1921, the regiment was renamed the Royal West Kent Regiment (Queen's Own) and, in April of the same year, was again renamed, this time as the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment.

After distinguished service in the Second Boer War, along with both the First and the Second World Wars, on 1 March 1961, the regiment was amalgamated with the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment) to form the Queen's Own Buffs, The Royal Kent Regiment, which was destined to be short-lived. On 31 December 1966, the Queen's Own Buffs was merged with the other regiments of the Home Counties Brigade—the Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment, the Royal Sussex Regiment and the Middlesex Regiment—to form the Queen's Regiment, which was in turn amalgamated with the Royal Hampshire Regiment, on 9 September 1992, to form the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment (Queen's and Royal Hampshires). Throughout its existence, the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment was popularly and operationally known as the ''Royal West Kents''.

History

Early years

When the regiment was formed, Kent was one of five counties (the others being Surrey, Staffordshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire) that was split to create more than one regiment. Kent was split into two areas, with those in West Kent forming the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment, while those in East Kent becoming the Buffs (East Kent Regiment). The dividing line that separated the two regimental areas was east of the River Medway. The regiment's recruitment area covered both the towns and rural areas of West Kent and a number of south-east London suburbs that were later included in the County of London.

The Childers reforms also affiliated Militia and Volunteer battalions with their local county regiments, giving the Royal West Kents the following organisation:Westlake, pp. 114–22.

''Regulars''
* 1st Battalion – former 50th Foot
* 2nd Battalion – former 97th Foot

''Militia''
* 3rd Battalion – former 1st Battalion, West Kent Light Infantry
* 4th Battalion – former 2nd Battalion, West Kent Light Infantry, disbanded 1894

''Volunteers''
* 1st Volunteer Battalion – former 1st Kent Rifle Volunteer Corps
* 2nd Volunteer Battalion – former 3rd Kent (West Kent) Rifle Volunteer Corps
* 3rd Volunteer Battalion – former 4th Kent (Royal Arsenal) Rifle Volunteer Corps
* 4th Volunteer Battalion – new battalion raised in 1900

1881–1914

The 1st Battalion fought at the second battle at Kassassin on 9 September 1882 and at the Battle of Tel el-Kebir a few days later during Anglo-Egyptian War. It then spent two years on garrison duty in Cyprus before being transferred to Sudan, where it fought at the Battle of Ginnis during the Mahdist War. It spent the years up to the outbreak of the First World War on garrison duty, including at Ceylon (together with the 2nd battalion) and Malta.Pateman, p. 4

In 1899, at least twenty members of the regiment raped an elderly Burmese woman in Rangoon, who subsequently died. The matter was initially covered up by military authorities, but when the viceroy, Lord Curzon, upon learning of the affair, dismissed many of the men involved and punished the regiment by sending it to Aden for two years without any leave.

The 2nd Battalion was deployed to South Africa shortly after its formation, in the aftermath of the First Boer War. It was then posted to Ireland and spent the remaining years of the 19th century in the United Kingdom before being sent to Egypt in 1899. After only six months, they returned to the United Kingdom in March 1900, to mobilize into a new 8th Division going to South Africa which was in the middle of the Second Boer War. A total of 1,030 officers and men of the regiment left Southampton in the ''SS Bavarian'' in March 1900, but the regiment's only action was a skirmish at Biddulphsberg, alongside the 2nd battalions of the Grenadier and Scots Guards. It stayed in South Africa until early November 1902, when it left Cape Town for Ceylon, then served in Hong Kong, Singapore, Peshawar and Multan before the outbreak of the First World War.

Between 1881 and 1913, the regiment lost 219 men: 22 killed in action or died from wounding, 12 by accident, and 185 from disease. A memorial for those who died in service exists in All Saints Church, Maidstone, which is located next to the regiment's barracks.

By the time the Territorial Force was created in 1908, the suburban area of West Kent had been transferred to the County of London, so the 2nd and 3rd Volunteer battalions became the 20th (County of London) Battalion (Blackheath and Woolwich) in the new London Regiment. The 4th Volunteer Battalion was disbanded, and the 1st VB was formed into the 4th and 5th Battalions of the QORWK in the Kent Brigade of the TF's Home Counties Division. The regiment now had one Reserve and three Territorial battalions.

First World War

During the First World War, over 60,000 men served with the Queen's Own (Royal West Kent Regiment). Three VCs were awarded. However, 6,866 officers and other ranks lost their lives, with many thousands more wounded.

Regular Army

The 1st Battalion, which was a Regular Army unit stationed in Dublin at the outbreak of war in August 1914, was one of the first units to be moved to France where it became part of the 13th Brigade in the 5th Division. Among its first major engagements were the Battle of Mons on 23 August and the Battle of Le Cateau three days later. In October, the battalion made a heroic stand at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle; being the only unit not to fall back. Out of 750 men, only 300 commanded by a lieutenant and a second lieutenant survived. Apart from a brief period from December 1917 to April 1918, when it was moved with the 5th Division to the Italian Front, the 1st Battalion was stationed on the Western Front for the duration of the war.

The 2nd Battalion was shipped from Multan to Mesopotamia, via Bombay, arriving in Basra in February 1915, where it was attached to the 12th Indian Brigade. Two companies were attached to the 30th Indian Brigade (part of the 6th (Poona) Division) and were captured in the Siege of Kut in April 1916. The remaining companies were attached to 34th Indian Brigade (part of 15th Indian Division), and were transferred to 17th Indian Division in August 1917. The 2nd Battalion remained in Mesopotamia for the duration of the war.

Special Reserve

On mobilisation the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion moved to its war station at Chatham, where it remained until the summer of 1918. Its role was to equip the Reservists and Special Reservists of the regiment and send them as reinforcement drafts to the Regular battalions serving overseas. Once the pool of reservists had dried up, the 3rd Bn trained thousands of raw recruits for the active service battalions. The 9th (Reserve) Battalion was formed alongside the 3rd Bn at Chatham in October 1914 to provide reinforcements for the New Army battalions. In the summer of 1918 the battalion was moved to Leysdown-on-Sea on the Isle of Sheppey as part of the Thames and Medway Garrison.Frederick, pp. 206–9.James, p. 90.

Territorial Force

The 1/4th and 1/5th Battalions were both part of the Kent Brigade, alongside the 4th and 5th (Weald) Buffs (East Kent Regiment), of the Home Counties Division were both sent to British India in late October 1914. Soon after arrival the division was broken up and both battalions were later sent to British Indian Army brigades, the 1/4th joining, in February 1918, the 3rd Quetta Brigade of 4th (Quetta) Division, the 1/5th to 54th Indian Brigade in the 18th Indian Division. The 2/4th Battalion, originally assigned along with 2/5th Battalion to 202nd (2/1st Kent) Brigade of 67th (2nd Home Counties) Division, took part in the Gallipoli Campaign in Autumn 1915 and then, having been evacuated, fought in the First Battle of Gaza in March 1917. The 3/4th Battalion landed at Le Havre in June 1917 and served as a Pioneer battalion on the Western Front.

New Armies

Several of the Service (Hostilities-only) battalions of the New Army fought in France and Flanders and in the Italian Front. At the Battle of Loos in September 1915, the 8th (Service) Battalion, raised the previous September, lost all but one of its officers, and 550 men.

War memorial

A war memorial (the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment Cenotaph) to the regiment's dead of the First World War stands in Brenchley Gardens in Maidstone. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, who was responsible for the Cenotaph in London among many other war memorials, the memorial is a cenotaph almost identical to that on Whitehall but reduced to two-thirds scale and lacking adorning flags. It was unveiled on 30 July 1921 by Major General Sir Edmund Leach, colonel of the regiment, and dedicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Inter-war period

At the end of the war, the 1st Battalion was transferred back to India, where it fought (along with the Territorial 1/4th Battalion) in the Third Anglo-Afghan War and then helped put down a Mahsud tribal rebellion in the Northwest Frontier in 1920. It spent the next decade in India and returned home to the United Kingdom in 1937. The 2nd Battalion returned to India from Mesopotamia in 1919, and to the United Kingdom in 1921, briefly becoming part of the British Army of the Rhine. It was stationed at various garrisons in the United Kingdom until 1937, when it moved to Palestine to help with the suppression of the Arab revolt. In 1939, it was moved to Malta.

The London Regiment had ceased to function in 1916, the battalions reverting to the administrative control of their pre-1908 affiliated Regular regiments – the QORWK in the case of the 20th Londons, which reformed in the new Territorial Army as the 20th London Regiment (The Queen's Own). In 1935, the 20th Londons was selected for conversion to the searchlight role as 34th (The Queen's Own Royal West Kent) Anti-Aircraft Battalion of the Royal Engineers, later 34th (The Queen's Own Royal West Kent) Searchlight Regiment of the Royal Artillery.Litchfield, p. 171. Despite transfer to the RE, the battalion continued to wear its Kentish White Horse cap badge and 20th Londons buttons.

Second World War

Regular Army

The 1st Battalion was part of the 10th Infantry Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division. Soon after the outbreak of war in September 1939, the battalion was sent to France where it became part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Unlike in the Great War the battalion was not immediately in action, and the first few months of the conflict were spent digging trenches and defensive positions in expectation of a repeat of the trench warfare of the Great War. In early May 1940 the battalion was transferred to the 132nd Infantry Brigade of the 44th (Home Counties) Infantry Division, a TA formation which also included the 4th and 5th Battalions. The battalion fought in the Battle of France and the subsequent retreat to Dunkirk soon after, returning to England via the Dunkirk evacuation, but had suffered heavy casualties, including the loss of two rifle companies. After returning, the battalion was again transferred, in September, to the 12th Infantry Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division. It remained in the United Kingdom, mainly engaged in anti-invasion duties, coastal defence, and training for future combat operations until February 1943, where the battalion left for French North Africa, arriving in Algeria in March, to take part in the final stages of the Tunisian Campaign. The battalion, in late April, suffered over 300 casualties assaulting Peter's Corner and Cactus Farm. The campaign ended in mid-May 1943, with over 238,000 Axis soldiers surrendering. The battalion remained in North Africa, were, due to its heavy losses in Tunisia, it served as a reserve battalion, sending drafts of soldiers to other units as battle-casualty replacements. It remained in this role until late 1943, and in February 1944, the battalion, now up to strength again, was sent to the Italian Front, and fought in the Fourth Battle of Monte Cassino and, after pursuing the retreating German Army, where they helped breach the Trasimene Line, took part in the battles for the Gothic Line. In December 1944, the battalion was transferred to Greece to help maintain order after the German withdrawal and the subsequent break out of the Greek Civil War.

The 2nd Battalion was part of the garrison of Malta during its protracted siege. It then formed part of the 234th Infantry Brigade in the abortive assault on the Italian-held Dodecanese islands in 1943, being captured by the Germans on the island of Leros. Some of the prisoners were transported in cattle trucks from Greece to Wernigerode, in the Harz Mountains, where they were forced to work in support of the German war effort. Others were transported by cattle train from Greece through the Balkans, to Stalag IV-B in Mühlburg, the largest prisoner of war camp in Germany. They were liberated by the advancing Russian Army on 23 April 1945.

The battalion was reconstituted in 1944 by amalgamating the few remaining survivors (less than 100 officers and men) with the 7th Battalion and redesignating it as the new 2nd Battalion. The 7th Battalion had been a training and draft finding formation assigned to the 211th Infantry Brigade, which was part of the 80th Infantry (Reserve) Division. In July 1944, the new 2nd Battalion was assigned to the 184th Infantry Brigade attached to the 61st Division, with which it remained for the rest of the war on home defence duties. In August 1945, the battalion-as well as the division-was preparing to be sent to the Far East, but the move was cancelled when Imperial Japan surrendered ending the war.

Territorial Army

The 4th Battalion was a Territorial Army (TA) unit that recruited primarily from Royal Tunbridge Wells and formed part of the 132nd Infantry Brigade, serving alongside the 5th West Kents and the 4th Battalion, Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment). The 132nd Brigade was an integral part of the 44th (Home Counties) Division and, with the rest of the division, was sent to France in April 1940 where it became part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) stationed on the Franco-Belgian border. About a month after arriving, it was involved in the battles of France and Dunkirk

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