R. L. V. Ffrench Blake - The 17/21st Lancers, 1759–1993

by John Keegan

The regiment is a peculiarly British institution. Other armies have regiments, some of great antiquity, but none bear the distinguishing marks that make the British regiment into the brotherhood of warriors that it is. The chief distinguishing mark is stability, conferred by the practice of enlistment by the individual in one regiment for the whole of his service. A second is territorial association, by which a regiment draws its members from the same region. A third is autonomy, a degree of self-government in choosing its members and regulating its internal affairs, including even succession to command. A fourth is individuality in dress, customs, drill and forms of address, which emphasise the difference between one regiment and another.

There are other characteristics but these are the most important. They have been acquired gradually. Officers, until the abolition of purchase in 1871, exchanged between regiments quite frequently, while cavalry regiments associated themselves with recruiting areas only after the Second World War. From early times, however, regimental individuality was pronounced, so much so that the evolution of the regiment into its distinctive modern form may be said to have been a natural development. The British regiment is an organic, not a statutory organisation, which has grown into what it is, deriving its nature from a variety of origins and influences.

The history of the 17th/21st Lancers exemplifies the pattern of regimental development in all its complexity. Under its present title it dates from the amalgamations of historic cavalry regiments in 1922. The 17th Lancers had originally been Light Dragoons, raised for the Seven Years War in 1759 and transformed into lancers after Waterloo. The 21st had had several incarnations, regiments of Light Dragoons with that number having been raised and disbanded during the Seven Years War, the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic Wars. Most recently the 21st had begun as a regiment of the Honourable East India Company, the 3rd Bengal European Cavalry. It was brought on to the British establishment at the Companys dissolution, after the end of the Mutiny, and was entitled Light Dragoons and Hussars before becoming Lancers in 1897. As a former Indian regiment it brought with it traces of the French grey and silver uniform of the Companys cavalry, which derived in turn from that of Louis XVs hussars, introduced into the sub-continent by the French adventurers who were Clives opponents in the struggle for control of the Moghul empire. That was not its only connection with the Moghul past. The title of Empress of India assumed by Queen Victoria, which she used in honouring the 21st for its distinction in the battle of Omdurman, was a revival of that borne by the Moghuls. Since the Moghuls claimed descent from Genghis Khan, the 21st preserve an association with the most ferocious light horsemen the world has ever known.

Being light horse, both the 17th and 21st have an extensive history of participation in imperial campaigns far from home, to which heavy cavalry was unsuited. America figures in their past to an unusual degree. The 17th saw out much of the American War of Independence. It also took part in the expedition to the River Plate of 18067, as did the 21st in its second incarnation, a strange episode from which Britains troubled relationship with Argentina dates. The 17th campaigned widely in India, during the Companys wars of conquest and pacification in the early nineteenth century, and returned for the Mutiny, in which the 3rd Bengal European Cavalry was raised. Both regiments were to fight in Africa, against the Zulus, Sudanese and Boers; in the second Sudanese campaign the 21st mounted one of the most famous and one of the last decisive charges delivered by British cavalry.

The regiment which came into existence in 1922 had, therefore, a heritage of service perhaps more varied than that of any other in the cavalry of the line. It also had outstanding distinctions, notably from the Crimea where it had charged in the Light Brigade at Balaclava. Its imperial involvement had kept it outside Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, while the nature of the First World War had deprived it of the chance to operate in its traditional role on those battlefields. In the Second World War, however, it was to win new and great distinction, particularly in the bitter battles around the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in 1943, and then in the long struggle for Italy on terrain so menacing to armoured units.

The regiments last commitment before amalgamation was in Operation Granby in the Gulf War, where a detachment took part in what will come to be recognised as the most perfectly executed offensive in the history of armoured warfare. Now it is to amalgamate with the 16th/5th Lancers, with which it fought in Tunisia. It brings to the amalgamation not only its ancestral honours and its imperial traditions but also its distinctive regimental character. It is a strongly family regiment, in which many men with the same name have served over several generations. It has become firmly territorial, with its roots in the central shires. It has highly distinctive customs and unique peculiarities, notably the most widely recognised cap badge in the army. It is, above all, a happy regiment, not only a brotherhood of warriors but a genuine community of past and present members and of their kith and kin. The 17th/21st Lancers exemplifies the regimental system at its best. Its friends will wish it a splendid new future in its incarnation as the Queens Royal Lancers.