Episode 2 In the Highest Tradition

RHYTHMIC DRUMBEAT

BRASS BAND PLAYS

230 years ago, on their way to war,

foot soldiers of the Lancashire Fusiliers plucked wild roses from the wayside

and wore them into action.

They won an historic victory.

The Lancashire Fusiliers in name are no more.

They were one of four disbanded regiments reborn as the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

But their traditions and rich heritage of bravery live on.

This is the Minden Rose, floating for the moment in champagne,

but soon to disappear in a manner not approved of in fashionable restaurants,

but then tradition is precisely what fashion isn't.

At Minden in 1759,

the Lancashire Fusiliers engaged in one of the most remarkable actions in all warfare.

On foot they charged a force of 10,000 French cavalry and broke and beat them.

Gentlemen, to your good health.

APPLAUSE

BANGS GAVEL THREE TIMES

We will now rise and drink in solemn silence to those who fell at Minden.

BUZZ OF CONVERSATION

Oh, well done.

'It's just like eating a mouthful of cream crackers.

'You can't swallow. You go through the actions of swallowing and it just will not go down.

'I actually cheated slightly. I still had half a rose left in my mouth at the end of it.'

-Well done.

-Well done. APPLAUSE

'You're not a member of the club until you've eaten a rose,

'so it joins you together into a brotherhood of officers inside that one battalion.

'Just very much on the surface to the outsider it looks simply a ceremony,

'a bit of pomp, a bit of style and nothing else,

'but to be part, a fully-fledged member of the battalion,

'to eat the rose which commemorates a great battle honour that the battalion won,

'is extremely important, especially to a young subaltern.'

LAUGHTER

'The tradition is an absolute foundation of the British Army and it's upon that which we build.

'And we will maintain the tradition and it will be maintained.'

Well done.

For the next 209 years, the Lancashire Fusiliers, garrisoned here in Bury, were to fight on,

accumulating battle honours like the vivid primrose hackle for conspicuous bravery in the Boer War.

Ironically, it was peace, not war, that did for them -

amalgamation in 1968 beneath the red and white hackle of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

Officially, the primrose hackle is now redundant, though not to a defiant few,

especially on Gallipoli Day.

Well, it's always made me very proud to be a solider to start off with

and to be a member...which, in my opinion and a lot of other opinions,

is the finest regiment in the British Army.

And the greatest disaster was when the government with their fancy ideas started the amalgamation.

Stand at ease! Stand easy...

Amalgamation, an economic fact of life, but there are those who still see it as betrayal.

I won't wear the red and white one.

There's one day of the year when they expect us to wear the red and white one.

That's on Association Day in September.

But what we do, or some of us do, is we don't bother. We just go out without a hackle or without a hat.

The Lancashire Fusiliers, now two fading colours in a parish church, laid up on a St George's Day.

That was a rather sad day because that yellow hackle had been in so many great conflicts and battles.

It meant so much to the men of the Lancashire Fusiliers.

Perhaps as much as home means to them in one sense,

so their membership of the regiment was just like being part of a family.

I felt they were worried that they were going out as second-class citizens into another regiment,

but they got told from the pulpit that they were going out

with all the glory and honour of the primrose hackle.

The other people should be grateful that they can join you.

And on the day these colours were laid up in this church,

our regimental church for many years,

I've never seen so many grown men crying in this church as I've ever seen anywhere.

MOURNFUL ORGAN MUSIC

There is more to it than sheer nostalgia or pride.

It is as though the dead have been posthumously deprived.

74 years beyond Gallipoli where they won six VCs before breakfast,

three Lancashire Fusiliers still survive to recall its horror.

These old warriors are two of them.

When I've seen the bodies going up in the air,

it appalled me to see so many dead bodies, you know.

Unburied, lying on their tummies.

I think if you can get the true facts of the war...

..there'll be no more wars at all.

If you can get the really true facts, because there should be no wars at all.

The sun used to sink down into the sea and I used to think,

"Oh, my goodness, shall I ever get back to England?"

BAND PLAYS MILITARY MUSIC

On this day, they exercise their freedom of the city to march, bayonets fixed,

beneath the bloodiest battle honour of them all.

Honouring the dead is an act of reconciliation. It transcends the regimental rivalries.

They march as one behind a common mascot -

Bobby the buck antelope.

The day has no message beyond remembering the dead.

Bury has a socialist mayor, Mrs Jacqui Adler,

but there are to be no strident messages about the futility of war.

The mayor, in fact, is visibly moved.

It was magnificent. It really was fabulous.

I feel really dead proud.

I think the actual occasion itself has got to be above politics

because in all honesty, these men gave their lives for us.

And because I wasn't there in the war, what can I do to thank them?

This is the only way I can show and I think this council can show

that yes, we do appreciate that some people did die for us here in this town to enable me to be born.

I've always thought tradition is important. It's part of what our foundations are built on.

And without our foundations, if we didn't have traditions,

I think our society would really crumble.

I think when it gets bad, we fall back on our traditions,

so yes, I think traditions are very important.

I shed a few tears.

I shed a few tears - one, for the actual Gallipoli men that walked past.

They took part in the march past and they must be 90... in their 90s easily, these men,

and to see three men in their 90s taking the march past, it just choked me up.

APPLAUSE

Aged almost seven, Bobby the buck mascot has yet to buckle down to military discipline.

If I'm in the pen and I clean him out, if I don't hear him, he creeps up and he sticks the horns in you.

Well, he rips clothes and jumpers quite regular.

Normally, you get stuck in the leg and you get blood running down the leg.

Oh, yeah, I wouldn't part with him. Not for anything.

I'd never see owt happen to him.

There's nothing that can't be done for him.

Everybody will bend over backwards to help or make sure that Bobby's all right.

Bending over backwards, or frontwards for that matter, can be unwise in Bobby's presence.

His understandable aversion to intruding television crews is obvious.

Mind yourself.

Go on. This way!

Come on!

Hey!

The Lancashire Fusiliers once had a mascot so celebrated

that a generation later, her story was revived - Minnie the Mule.

In March 1944, the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers,

were part of General Orde Wingate's 2nd Chindit Expedition.

And one of the road blocks established across the Japanese lines of communication

was called White City.

During a Japanese attack on this road block,

one of the animals that was carrying mortar ammunition for the 1st Battalion

gave birth quite unexpectedly to a foal.

Clearly not the most opportune time to be born.

She had a great effect on the morale of the troops

and during lulls in the fighting in the White City road block,

troops would drift down to wherever Minnie was, near her mother in the mortar post,

and feed her cups of tea and hardtack biscuits.

It even got to the stage that Brigade Headquarters issued daily bulletins on the state of Minnie's health.

Eventually, the time came, because of the great Japanese pressure on the road block,

for us to evacuate it and Minnie was too weak to walk,

at least any distance.

And I suppose it's the British sentiment for animals.

What happened next must have convinced the Japs they had no chance of winning.

Rather than disposing of her as might have happened in many other armies,

the whole of 77 Brigade mounted an attack to clear the Japanese off an airstrip,

so that a plane could come in and take Minnie and, to be fair, some of our wounded out,

but there were great sighs of relief amongst the battalion

when Minnie was flown back to India for proper veterinary attention.

She went round the world with the regiment and finally died in Egypt in 1951.

MILITARY BAND PLAYS

And so 74 years on, the fallen of one of war's most awful battles are still honoured.

Tradition defies amalgamation and will continue to do so.

There are other traditions too which apparently still stir the blood.

Right, here we go.

Average age - 74.

Repeat, 74.

The forerunners of the White Helmets team

of the Royal Corps of Signals have reassembled.

Watch me.

Well, we're old, we'll give you that, but it keeps us together, it keeps us friendly,

as it always has done.

It gives us an interest in life. It takes us back to when we were young and fit.

Not that we're not fit now. We're all fit. But we are old.

We have taken a few tumbles, but we're resilient.

As ever. It's an attitude of mind.

If you want to go in a corner and creep up and be morbid

and roll your...turn your toes up, fair enough,

but we're not going to do that.

Well, that one was France '39.

Undaunted by the dismal day, the winged messengers of Granddad's Army have come to discuss the latest

in sprockets and balancing acts with their successors.

-The camaraderie crosses generations.

-You wouldn't let go of it.

-No.

They're also to witness a traditional inauguration.

Each new officer in charge of the White Helmets,

though without the vast experience of these riders he commands,

must undergo an initiation that few Hell's Angels would fancy.

Obviously, the fire jump is the big initiation ceremony.

Everyone in the team, in order to obtain his white helmet and be able to wear it with pride,

does have to jump through the fire.

The thing going through my mind most of all is will I or will I not get a good jump?

There's a lot of pride at stake here.

All the soldiers enjoy getting the front wheel a couple of feet off the ground

when the back wheel has landed.

I've been over the ramp a couple of times today and unfortunately, haven't managed it quite yet.

Hopefully, when I attempt the fire jump for the first time,

with the real fire there, I'll go through without any problem.

It's quite hot in there.

But I'm told that speed and keeping my head down will save me getting burnt.

-Are you at all nervous about this?

-Very. At the moment.

I haven't done it yet. There's a first time for everything.

CHEERING

Conflagrations have long been the currency of the fighting man,

whether it's the White Helmets' fire ritual or retribution from on high.

The occupant of this finery was much given to the latter - Major General Sir Robert Ross,

whose penchant for burning things down was to have a marked effect on American architecture.

In late 1813, the Americans sacked what was then called York,

the capital of Upper Canada, nowadays, of course, Toronto.

And it was decided to send an expedition to punish the Americans, I suppose,

for this intrusion into the British colonial empire.

And Ross was the man selected by Wellington to command the expedition.

So he took part of the Peninsular Army. They sailed from Bordeaux.

More troops were sent from England. They all assembled in Bermuda.

They sailed up the Chesapeake Bay and marched on Washington DC.

They met and fought the American Army at a place called Bladensburg just north-east of Washington.

They defeated the Americans and marched into Washington.

President Madison had laid out a dinner in his house

in anticipation of his own officers sitting down to enjoy a victory dinner.

Ross and his officers sat down and ate the President's dinner

and the following morning, on orders from the government, burned down the public buildings in Washington,

one of which was the President's house, and when it was then painted white to cover up the scorch marks,

that's when it became known as the White House.

# Blest isle with matchless, with matchless beauty crowned... #

So Britannia, a distaff link between Boadicea and Margaret Thatcher, had prevailed again.

Who could sustain the absurd illusion that Britain has ever been a male chauvinist society?

In this centrepiece of the King's Own Royal Border Regiment, kindly note the position of her right foot,

firmly planted on the supine thorax of King Theodore of Ethiopia.

He thoroughly deserved it.

He'd invited many Britons to come and westernise his country, then held them hostage.

Sir Robert Napier was sent out to free them.

Theodore, correctly anticipating the inevitable, committed suicide.

Sir Robert promptly relieved his estate of its most prized possession - the proclamation drum.

Not only is this drum or third of the drum the oldest piece of regimental silver in the British Army,

it is also the oldest drum in the world and has been successfully dated back to 1100,

although it could be a lot older than that.

Once it was captured at the Battle of Magdala in 1868 and divided between the three regiments in the battle,

it was used by the King's Own Regiment, the 4th of Foot,

as the final stage in a young subaltern's dining-in night.

The process of using it was called "going through the drum",

by which the subaltern would wear the drum as a collar and try to drink a pint of beer from a silver goblet,

whilst wearing the collar.

This I will attempt to demonstrate in a somewhat sober mood. Philip?

The art of getting this actually on to you

is your non-drinking hand is shoved through the neck first,

followed subsequently by...

..the head.

As so. A lot more difficult than it looks.

The drinking arm was then filled with a silver goblet

and then, using something that's only seen every four years in Olympic gymnastics,

the man would attempt to drink the pint of beer whilst in this position.

With a somewhat tipped movement, he would then go back...

This was very popular with the regimental tailors as it tends to rip everything

and the man used to get very wet.

The real art in this was getting the drum off

which again Philip and I will attempt to demonstrate.

One's ears always get in the way.

As does one's head and arm.

Right... Here.

Right, yeah... Ah!

Once this has been successfully negotiated,

the young subaltern would then...

..move to the end of the table where the Colonel was sitting

and would then slam his feet into the Colonel, state that he had successfully been through the drum

and have his leave to join the regiment, which the Colonel would then give.

After years of searching, an Ethiopian scholar tracked down the drum to the regimental mess.

They didn't give it back, but said they wouldn't pour beer through it any more.

The King's Own Royal Border Regiment had a kind of kleptomania for drums.

This little pyramid all in silver was liberated from a French regiment in the Peninsular War.

When the French asked for their return, the King's Own affected an ignorance of foreign tongues

and proceeded to parade them on the anniversary of their famous victory.

They still do. For some reason, very few French attend this ceremony.

By the drums,

by the centre, quick march!

Before this century and the EEC, Francophobia was rather fashionable.

Next to compound the insult were the Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire.

We stole the regimental march from the French in battle in 1793.

It is unique in the army in that it is the only musical battle honour in existence.

In the Battle of Famars, the regiment were fighting a rearguard action, basically.

We were in that unaccustomed position of being held back and beaten off by the French.

This lasted for most of the day

and during the day, all the French could sing was a revolutionary song of that time called Ca Ira.

The Colonel, by this stage at his wits' end, but known to be a resourceful chap,

called his drum major forward.

"Drummie, can we play Ca Ira?"

The drum major, never being able to set down a challenge, said, "Of course, sir."

That night, he practised quietly with the band and learnt the tune to Ca Ira.

The next morning dawned,

a fantastic morning for the CO's plans, the battlefield in thick fog.

He called his battalion together, briefed them, set the band at the head, the battalion fell in behind

and with the shout of "Come on, lads, we'll break these scoundrels to their own damn tune,"

the band struck up Ca Ira and the battalion marched towards the enemy camp.

And the French, expecting reinforcements, heard Ca Ira, didn't lift a finger,

the regiment walked into the camp and won the Battle of Famars.

Unfortunately, though, once back in England, in Dartford in Kent,

the regiment, justifiably proud of its march, was marching through the streets of Dartford

to be stoned and hurled abuse by the locals who didn't understand the story at all

and thought that it was a disloyal regiment playing French revolutionary marching songs.

Yorkshire regiments naturally make tradition out of cricket practice

and even those of us who wonder why they bother

have to concede that their fielding shows marked improvement.

Sport, sometimes hardly distinguishable from war, has long had a role in the British Army.

Besieged at Ladysmith, the Gordon Highlanders played football, an act of levity

that so infuriated the solemn Boers that they exploded a shell in the middle of their pitch.

The Scots simply filled in the crater, sent on a few substitutes and resumed the game.

Another regiment to go hungry at Ladysmith were the "Glosters".

Gentlemen, lady, Ladysmith is relieved.

CHEERING

ALL: To the relief of Ladysmith!

These days, the catering has conspicuously improved,

but they still recall those months of near starvation at the turn of the century.

Earlier on this commemorative evening, we dined extremely well,

all that is except one man, a major, second in command of Headquarters Company.

His fate - symbolic deprivation.

No food, no wine until his famine was ended with a mess tin of bully beef and a hard biscuit.

It's a bit grubby. LAUGHTER

The "Glosters" don't dream up these idiosyncrasies on the spur of the moment.

They're the only British Army regiment to record the significance of their many customs in a book.

Lady, gentlemen...

..I have before me the regimental customs book.

Most of the assembled company are familiar with it, but we do have some distinguished guests

and for their benefit, I will run through the preamble to give you an idea of what it's all about.

The origins of the regimental customs book are shrouded in the mists of time and will remain so,

but one or two points are worth mentioning.

"All records of regimental customs will be maintained in the customs book.

"The battalion's second in command..." Moi!

"..will be the keeper of the book and will be responsible for its maintenance.

"Regimental customs may only be proposed at a regimental guest night.

"Any officer who has served one year with the battalion may propose a custom.

"All proposals must have a seconder and be carried by a majority vote.

"Officers have the following votes - field officers three, captains two, subalterns..."

'Most customs have their roots in heroic actions or tight corners.

'Captain John Lambie, tragically to lose a son to terrorism

'in Northern Ireland shortly after this was filmed, explains another.'

John, one story here really intrigues me. Now that everybody's gone, please tell me the story.

It's a custom within the officers' mess to commemorate May 1940

when the British Expeditionary Force was withdrawing.

The RSM of the 61st of Foot, RSM Pearce,

mastered his fatigue by placing his bayonet in his waist belt

and the point underneath his chin.

The Regimental Sergeant Major of the 1st, whenever dining in the officers' mess,

may be asked to partake of a drink

with the bayonet placed on the table and the point under his chin in remembrance of that time.

This was mastering fatigue of how long among his troops?

It was basically about five or six days without any sleep at all.

So what do you have to do? Show me.

On my last dining-out night in the officers' mess as Regimental Sergeant Major,

when I left the battalion,

it came as a shock when they read the customs book and they produced the bayonet

-and the cup was full...

-This was full of whisky, yeah?

-Whisky.

Then you had to place the bayonet, which is the SLR bayonet,

because we don't have the No.4 bayonet, and you had to drink...

..from the cup. The only thing that worried me was all the subalterns that were around.

They may have pressed my head down on the bayonet.

-That would have been the end of you.

-That's the end of it.

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