Description
Physical description
Chinese dragon, facing left, on a bar above a scroll embossed ROYAL BERKSHIRE. Slider to reverse.
History note
Pattern current from 1896 to 1958. Pattern sealed 26 July 1896.
The predecessor Regiment was raised in 1743 in Jamaica as Colonel Trelawney's Regiment. In 1747 the Regiment was ranked as 63rd Regiment of Foot but in 1748 it was re-designated 49th Regiment of Foot. In 1782 it was again re-designated, this time with a county affiliation, as 49th (Hertfordshire) Regiment of Foot, and in 1816 it became 49th (Princess Charlotte of Wales's) (Hertfordshire) Regiment of Foot. In this guise it served in the Opium Wars of 1840-42, gaining the distinction of a Chinese dragon as an emblem.
In the 1881 Cardwell/Childers reforms the Regiment merged with the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment of Foot to become Princess Charlotte of Wales's (Berkshire Regiment). It rather unusually adopted as its principal symbols those associated with the junior Regiment, namely the stag and oak tree emblem of the old Royal Berkshire Militia, all within a circlet bearing BERKSHIRE, although carrying forward the 49th's association with the Princess of Wales in the new Regiment's title. In 1885, for its part in the Battle of Tofrek in the Sudan in March of that year, the Regiment became a "Royal" Regiment, as Princess Charlotte of Wales's (Royal Berkshire Regiment), with corresponding changes to the helmet plate circlet.
In 1896, with the introduction of badges for the slouch and forage caps, the badge changed entirely, adopting the old 49th Regiment's Chinese dragon as the sole emblem. In 1920 the Regiment was re-named the Royal Berkshire Regiment (Princess Charlotte of Wales's), without a change of badge.
The badge was frequently worn with a red triangular backing, point down, associated with an incident when the 49th's Light Company carried out a daring attack during the Battle of Brandywine (September 1777) during the American War of Independence. When worn on the field service cap the backing was often cut down to the shape of the badge.
In 1958 the Regiment merged with the Wiltshire Regiment to become the Duke of Edinburgh's Royal Regiment, Berkshire and Wiltshire, and assigned to the Wessex Brigade. In 1969 the Brigade was dissolved and the constituent Regiments regained their individual identities.
In 1994 the Regiment merged with the Gloucestershire Regiment to become the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment, with a new cap badge. The new Regiment was unique in the British Army in being permitted to wear the ribbon of the US Presidential Unit Citation, inherited from the Gloucestershire Regiment, who were awarded the honour for the 1st Battalion's stand on Gloster Hill on the Imjin River, Korea, in April 1951.
In 2005 this Regiment was re-named Light Infantry. In 2007 it was amalgamated with the Devon and Dorset Regiment, also re-named Light Infantry in 2005, to become 1st Battalion The Rifles. This latter was itself a Regiment newly created from Light Infantry, Green Jacket and Wessex Brigade successors.
Inscription
Royal Berkshire