Episode 1 In the Highest Tradition

Gentlemen, our Colonel in-Chief, her Majesty the Queen.

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN PLAYS

Behold, not a single officer of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards

has risen to his feet. That's tradition.

And what of this, the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards

talking their way through the national anthem?

That's tradition.

GAVEL BANGS

It would seem that Rocket Troop Royal Horse Artillery

have been asleep since 1952.

Mr Vice, the King.

Gentlemen.

The King.

ALL: The King.

Others, beneath the imperious gaze of a long-dead foreign monarch,

would appear to play the wrong national anthem altogether.

That's tradition too.

At the turn of the century,

none other than Tsar Nicholas the last of Russia

was Colonel in-Chief of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.

He loved them and used to entertain them on his yacht.

And before his assassination,

he used to send them little presents in a frame by Faberge.

Attention!

Some traditions are common to the British Army and will never change.

Corporal Whitney, long hair, sir. You want to get that off today.

Corporal Whitney, long hair, sir.

Apart from discipline, what emerges

when you delve into British military tradition

is that there's no such entity as a British Army.

What you find is a confederation of regiments,

hopefully fighting on the same side,

all fiercely preserving their individuality

by being as different from one another as possible.

Edinburgh Castle was the obvious place to start,

since it's the home of the oldest regiment in the British Army,

the Royal Scots, the first Regiment of Foot,

raised in 1633.

What appeared to be a modest welcome proved nothing of the sort.

In the highest of all traditions,

the first Regiment of Foot explained they've no traditions whatsoever.

Why should they, the exemplars, indulge in eccentric customs?

It's up to the other regiments, they insisted,

to make themselves different to us.

Over, and emphatically out.

So we tried a more responsive castle, Windsor.

Its lovely deanery may well evoke images of orthodox theology,

but both its library and incumbent,

the Right Reverend Michael Mann, Dean of Windsor, spring surprises.

Every single book here is on a military subject,

and there are other artefacts

which caused the Queen to observe on one occasion,

"Doesn't look much like a deanery, does it?"

Yes, I suppose I'm rather a bogus churchman in that sense,

because... Indeed, my wife gets me under the Trades Description Act.

She married a soldier and ended up with a parson.

I'd never thought of doing anything else,

I'd always wanted to be a soldier from the age of two or three.

I'd never thought of anything else at all.

And I went into a regiment where we have strong family connections,

my wife is the granddaughter, the daughter, the wife,

the sister and the mother of an officer in the KDGs,

or now the QDGs as they are amalgamated.

So, it's been a very strong link,

and I've never thought of doing anything else at all.

It was the Church which was rather the surprise,

particularly to my fellow officers.

Obviously no Dean to be trifled with,

but how much importance does he place on tradition?

Well, in spite of what everyone says, I personally think

the British people, as a people, are a very traditional people.

Every human being needs to have roots.

They need to know where they come from.

Look at the way the Americans spend endless dollars

on genealogical tables.

We all need to know where we come from.

A Muslim said to me, "If you don't know where you've come from,

"how can you know who you are or where you're going?"

And in that sense we need tradition, that sense of continuity,

and a sense of not just being here for ourselves,

but here because of those who've gone before

and for those who are going to follow after.

And tradition reinforces this very strongly.

It's part of a moving tapestry.

MILITARY MARCHING MUSIC PLAYS

The United States Army, sir! By God!

Yee-hah! Yee-hah!

An attachment to a cavalry regiment

as idiosyncratic as the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards

can at first bemuse an American officer like Major Joe Rafeenie.

It was quite surprising,

I first observed it with the 13/18th Royal Hussars,

who were visiting our cavalry unit in Monheim, Germany in the '70s.

And we were on the parade field and they were invited for a review,

past the tanks, and the troops marched.

And when they played the British national anthem,

there were three officers there from the 13th/18th

who immediately found the nearest chairs

and sat down and went on talking.

The Americans were standing to attention,

and here's the British officers,

and they're sitting down and talking.

So when it was over I said, "You're going to have to explain it."

I hope with all due respect to the regiment I have this right,

it was explained to me they were being honoured by Queen Mary,

they're called Queen Mary's Own, at a banquet one evening,

and I'm not exactly sure who at the head table

had had quite a bit to drink

and didn't feel like standing when it was played,

and it's said Queen Mary turned to everybody and said,

"Gentlemen, don't worry about standing, just continue to sit."

And from that day they continue to sit and never stand up.

And here they are, the 13th/18th Royal Hussars

very much at home in their Tidworth barracks,

a repository, rich not only in tradition but exotic furniture.

The tour guide is Major Willy Peter.

This is the anteroom, it equates really to the living room,

drawing room, sitting room of the mess.

And in much the same way that your sitting room or drawing room,

it contained your best property,

and here we see property dating back over 200 years.

And like the property

you have in your home, it has a variety of sources.

Some of it you'll have bought, some of it you'll have been given,

and probably not in your case, some of it has been nicked.

And if we look round now, we can see, for instance, this table.

This was liberated by the regiment in 1812 after the Battle of Victoria.

It belonged to King Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte.

And he was King of Spain at the time,

and he was quietly doing a runner after losing the Battle of Victoria,

and the 13th Light Dragoons fell upon his baggage train.

Proudly they display a contemporary picture of the massive ransacking.

Yes, a little light looting by the 13th Light Dragoons,

fine picture showing people really hard at work,

making their day's pay stretch as far as they possibly could.

But one gathers that looting wasn't universally acclaimed.

No, the Duke of Wellington,

who commanded all the British troops in Spain,

got pretty hacked off with it.

And in fact I think the 18th Light Dragoons,

or the 18th Hussars as they were then,

were threatened with disbandment if they did it once again.

But unfortunately we don't have any of the stuff

they nicked at that moment.

And going on further round,

we do have something marginally more substantial in this piano,

which is reputed to have come from the Japanese embassy in Berlin.

It's a handy little object, easy to conceal about the person,

and must have taken a great deal of effort

to get back to the regiment in 1945,

when we finished the advance through north-west Europe.

It is appalling, and would cost us, we estimate,

£20,000 to have it put back in perfect working order

as Mr Steinway originally made it.

I should think the Japanese embassy

have probably replaced it with a Yamaha now.

In peacetime you've never thought

of sending that piano back to the Japanese?

Well, the postage would be quite expensive.

There's an equally off-key footnote

to that loot-rich Battle of Victoria in 1813.

Replenishing their alcohol supplies at the enemy's expense,

Wellington's men awarded themselves a 48-hour binge,

thus permitting Joseph Bonaparte to slip back to France

with 55,000 survivors.

But penance for some of the more outrageous

battle-fuelled transgressions is not unknown.

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, for example,

the band of the 9th/12th Royal Lancers parades,

and everyone comes strictly to attention.

The ceremony is known somewhat euphemistically as regimental hymns.

Always, they play the Sicilian Vespers, but why?

One of the reasons we play regimental hymns

is during the Peninsular War, the 12th Light Dragoons raided a nunnery

and stole 104 bottles of wine.

They also raped and pillaged the nuns and the surrounding area,

and as a penance, the Duke of Wellington

said that we'd play regimental hymns for 104 years,

which is a tradition that's stood ever since.

The theft was officially expiated around 1917,

but doubtless with the nuns still on their conscience,

they've continue to parade twice a week ever since.

Curiously, the Pope had long since forgiven them.

He acknowledged their new-found piety with his personal blessing,

and gave them permission to adopt his favourite hymn,

already purloined by Imperial Russia for its national anthem.

In the silver room of the 14th/20th King's Hussars,

there's yet more evidence of how profitable it was

to have been on the winning side at the Battle of Victoria.

Happily, their most prized exhibit has been frequently washed.

This is what we call the Emperor,

which was in fact Emperor Joseph Bonaparte's chamber pot.

And it was looted by the regiment in 1813

after the defeat of Emperor Joseph Bonaparte

at the Battle of Victoria in the Peninsular War.

And it's traditional that we drink out of this after dinner,

after a formal guest night, formal dinner,

and it has champagne in it.

And it's a form of loving cup.

The Emperor.

The Emperor.

It's one of the reasons we've always been known

as the Emperor's Chambermaids,

the fact that we have the chamber pot here.

Now, the 13th/18th Hussars also consider they have a right

to the ownership of this particular pot.

And they say we should have their table,

which they looted at the same time.

The answer very firmly in my mind is possession is nine-tenths of the law.

For regiments like the 14th/20th,

the visual glamour of the horse has mostly gone.

Today's cavalry are groomed by young men of mechanical bent.

With that link with history severed,

how do the other ranks in another era view tradition?

I think the British Army is the British Army

because of our traditions.

It's good getting dressed up in your smart regalia

and spurs and everything,

but during the day we're just covered in oil,

working on these things all the time.

I think the relevance is basically remembering the wars

that people of our regiment have gone through in years gone by,

it makes us different from everybody else.

So how is the British soldier now regarded by the public?

They must think we're out of sight, out of mind.

I think generally they might think we're just a load of squaddies

that may get drunk occasionally and cause trouble.

But they forget we're just like a normal nine-to-five job,

and we're working hard over in Germany and everything.

We're only remembered when it comes to something

like the Falklands conflict

or any other conflict where they may be needed,

then it's all Land of Hope and Glory sort of thing.

LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY PLAYS

Military tradition may have its roots in the Crimea, Rorke's Drift,

the Somme, but it remains a living subject.

The Falklands in the '80s subscribed a new chapter,

and all the while another war endured, against terrorism,

and an enemy bereft of honour.

The obsequies themselves are tragically familiar,

for so much of military tradition is related to the deaths of comrades.

FUNERAL MARCH PLAYS

The 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards have a unique symbol of remembrance.

This is a very special piece of our property.

It's The Empty Saddle,

a horse with that unique longing for his master.

With reverse stirrups cast in bronze and not in silver,

like much of our property.

Which sits in a very special place on the mantelpiece, never polished,

and never moved, as a lasting reminder to us

of those nearly 300 officers and soldiers killed

from our two regiments in the First World War.

Silver, not bronze,

has always been the traditional hardware of the mess.

This modest table decoration, the Inkerman centrepiece,

belongs to the Royal Regiment of Wales.

Engraved upon it you'll find the entire regimental history,

including a passionate affinity with goats,

which began at dawn one morning in the Crimea in 1856.

Goats in those days were press-ganged to the battlefield

as meat on the hoof.

But one broke loose that morning and heroically charged with the troops.

Far from stewing him the next day,

they promoted him to regimental mascot.

Queen Victoria met him on his return,

and the Royal goatherd has been providing his successors ever since.

Today's has his own military identity card,

his own full-time valet with insignia of Goat Major,

his own chauffeur-driven transport,

and a goat hangar entirely to himself.

Goat major, would you kindly introduce me to this chap?

This is 24416503 Lance Corporal Gwilym Jenkins,

better known to the public as Taffy Three.

How old is he?

He's 6.5 years old now.

So he's not old enough to smoke?

He doesn't smoke, but he actually eats a few a day.

Taff.

Come on.

Lance Corporal.

There you go.

Tremendous!

How many of those will he get through in a day?

He used to at one time,

he used to be on a ration for cigarettes, two a day.

But now they've stopped the rations,

but he'll still eat them for his stomach, it helps to de-worm him.

What, 10, 12 a day?

No, roughly about five.

Does it do him any harm at all?

No.

Does he have any other medical problems?

No, not as such. He's the only goat I know,

since I've been looking after him, to have hay fever.

When we put fresh straw and hay down,

he actually sneezes in the summer months.

Does he eat the grass around here?

No, this goat is very fussy.

He won't eat carrots and he won't graze.

Because I've actually got to cut the grass myself with a lawn mower

and put it to one side, and sometimes he might eat it then.

Other than that, he doesn't bother.

So he's pretty tough to look after, really?

Yes, because he's very fussy.

But so is everyone in the Royal Regiment of Wales on St David's Day.

The leek must slant at the prescribed angle,

the music evoke distant valleys and eisteddfods.

For Lance Corporal Jenkins, it's full dress uniform.

But he's more than just a pampered mascot.

On one occasion intruders from a rival regiments broke in

and cut off his beard, at a price.

One sustained a broken arm, another a fractured rib,

and all three finished up in hospital.

CHEERING AND MILITARY MUSIC

St David's Day brings an orgy of tradition.

To explain what's going on here,

we asked the regimental druid to put you in the picture.

HE SPEAKS IN WELSH

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CHEERING

You haven't really joined the regiment at all

until you've eaten a raw leek at the statutory speed.

I actually tried this, and will never eat a leek again.

CHEERING

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Even if it's hamburgers and beans for dinner,

the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars don't like their officers to miss it...

..nor do they overlook the common courtesies.

Thank you very much, would you like a drink?

Beer, please, sir.

Beer on its way.

It would be folly, let alone invidious,

to suggest that any regiment in the British Army

has more style than the others,

but the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars are certainly candidates.

Dinner is served, sir.

The taxpayer may relax,

this is their home and they've paid for everything themselves.

Except, that is, the cutlery.

Accidentally stumbling over a treasure house of French silver

after the Battle of Salamanca,

they borrowed it to melt it down into spoons and forks.

Do you always dine like this?

Yes.

We dine six nights a week exactly the same as it is tonight,

and we always wear our green suit.

The reason behind it is very simple,

I was taught this when I arrived in the regiment,

and I suspect the Cornets who arrive now are still taught it.

We dress for dinner and we dine like this

because we are lucky enough to live in a building like this

with pictures like this, silver like this,

and our mess staff make the effort of dressing up to wait upon us,

the chef makes an effort out in the kitchen behind,

and therefore we are indebted to make the effort

to appear in the dining room, it's as simple as that.

We change if we believe there is necessary change,

but they are the things that we value and we retain.

We do believe in the way we live.

It sounds very pompous, but it's not.

Being home, it's simply not done here to send meals back.

In the unlikely event of a grievance

there's an official channel, the complaints and suggestions book.

At the turn of the century this very volume

was to become almost a daily exercise book

for an irascible young officer of burgeoning literary talent,

and, as history was to prove, much else, Winston Churchill.

Yes, he was continually appearing in the suggestions book,

the wages book, the fines book,

and every other book that appeared in the mess at the time.

In fact you could say could say that he was a fairly arrogant young man

while he was with the 4th Hussars in India.

Well, this is a particular example

of Winston Churchill's writing at the time.

On 30th January 1898 he wrote,

"In the opinion of WSC, the general comfort and furnishing of the mess

"being much below the standards of all other cavalry

and most infantry regiments in the army,

"it is suggested that fresh furniture be purchased,

"that the carpets be exported, that the hideous wallpaper be altered,

"and that the mess be generally rendered

"more suitable to the dignity of the regiment."

And it's signed by WS Churchill.

The poor PMC at the time, someone called Hogg,

writes in his comments, "Where? Price? Pattern? How?"

And he does say that he will do something,

but his most telling comment is to say that,

"Where it says the dignity of the regiment,

"it should read for the dignity of WS Churchill."

Did the regiment brush a few chips off the shoulders

of its most famous old boy?

Well, we'd like to think so,

we'd like to think that we had something to do

with producing the later man.

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN PLAYS

You'll recall earlier the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards

talking and laughing their way through the national anthem. Why?

There's no disrespect meant here at all.

We're as loyal as the next person to the Queen, the sovereign,

and we always have been and we always will be.

The point is that our loyalty is not in question,

and so you will notice that we sit and continue talking

throughout the national anthem,

and that's a custom and tradition of this regiment for many, many years.

But the problem is always finding out why you do those things.

I mean, there are a variety of choices,

and people normally perm one of the following.

One, George IV as Prince Regent

getting utterly hat-racked in the mess, incapable of movement,

so the remainder of the officers remained seated out of politeness,

that's one variation.

Second variation, all the officers on board ship incapable of standing up

due to lowness of ceiling, or bulkhead, I believe they call it,

so remain seated.

The third one, being so incredibly brave at some point or other

that their loyalty was no longer in doubt so they were excused doing it.

I don't know why we don't do it.

None of which explains why the Rocket Troop toasts the King.

This man, Sir William Congreve, is responsible for having designed

the army's latest secret weapon, a rocket.

Even Congreve only claimed that it was for "the annoyance of the enemy".

It was first fired in 1813

by a troop of 200 men under the command of Captain Bogue

at the Battle of Leipzig.

Not only did it achieve Congreve's

somewhat diffident objective of annoying the enemy,

it caused such widespread panic

that Bogue's tiny force swept up 3,000 Napoleonic prisoners.

In his moment of triumph, Bogue was killed.

The Allied Supreme Commander at Leipzig

was the Crown Prince of Sweden,

and he was so impressed that he showered Bogue's family

with every honour he could bestow.

To this day on the anniversary of Leipzig, warm messages of greeting

come to the Rocket Troop from the King of Sweden.

That's why they toast the King, and it's the only toast they drink.

GAVEL BANGS

Mr Vice, the King.

Gentlemen.

King Carl Gustaf XVI of Sweden.

ALL: The King.

Naturally it's drunk in aquavit.