THE ROYAL GREEN JACKETS
TERRITORIAL BATTALIONS
The Formation and Origins of the Regiment
The history of the Territorial Battalions which now form an integral part of The Royal Green Jackets is almost as long as that of their Regular colleagues and far more complex. Only a very simplified account can be outlined on this page.
For most of the nineteenth century they were completely independent of the Regular Army and confined to the role of home defence. Armed bodies such as The Duke of Cumberland's Sharpshooters and the Rangers (Gentlemen Members of Gray's Inn) were formed in London in response to the threat of invasion by Napoleon but disbanded in 1815, though some kept a continuous existence as rifle clubs.
In 1859 Rifle Volunteer Corps were again raised to face a threat from France and modem Territorial Battalions can trace direct descent from these units. Amongst them were The Victoria Rifles, The Queen's Westminster Rifles and The City of London Rifle Volunteer Brigade, whose names were to survive practically unchanged for the next 100 years.
The Cardwell reorganisation of the Army in 1881, which brought the 43rd and 52nd together as battalions of a single regiment, also established the first formal links between Volunteers and Regular regiments. In London no fewer than twelve Volunteer units were affiliated to The King's Royal Rifle Corps and nine to The Rifle Brigade, while The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry gained a Volunteer Battalion in each of its home counties. Twenty years later these affiliations took on a new aspect when the Volunteers in their hundreds went to fill the ranks of the Regular regiments in the Boer War .
The title was changed to the Territorial Force in 1908 and on the outbreak of World War I battalions became even more closely integrated with their Regular counterparts and for the first time fought overseas as complete units. Though they were to return to the home-defence role between the wars, the same principle was followed in World War II. Thus it was that at Calais in 1940 a Green Jacket brigade was composed of a Regular battalion each of The King's Royal Rifle Corps and The Rifle Brigade and a Territorial Battalion of Queen Victoria's Rifles (7th Battalion KRRC).
Green Jacket Territorial Battalions fought with distinction in France in 1940, throughout the Desert actions in North Africa, in Greece and Crete, in Italy and North-West Europe, and in Burma. Without their trained reinforcements of officers, NCOs and specialists the Regular Battalions could not have survived.
Through
the 1950s and 608 the Territorial Army endured a succession of reductions
until in 1967 The Queen's Royal Rifles (descendant of Queen Victoria's
Rifles and Queen's Westminsters), The London Rifle Brigade/Rangers and the
4th Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry were merged
into the 4th Battalion The Royal Green Jackets. In 1987 the process was
reversed and a 5th Battalion was created. These battalions can thus claim
descent from both their forebears of the independent Volunteers and from
The Royal Green Jacket family.