This glossary of names for the British include nicknames and terms, including affectionate ones, neutral ones, and derogatory ones to describe British people, Irish People and more specifically English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish people. Many of these terms may vary between offensive, derogatory, neutral and affectionate depending on a complex combination of tone, facial expression, context, usage, speaker and shared past history.
The Thin Red Line described an episode of the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854, during the Crimean War. In the incident, around 500 men of the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders led by Sir Colin Campbell, aided by a small force of 100 walking wounded, 40 detached Guardsmen, and supported by a substantial force of Turkish infantrymen, formed a line of fire against the Russian cavalry. Previously, Campbell's Highland Brigade had taken part in actions at the Battle of Alma and the Siege of Sevastopol. There were more Victoria Crosses presented to the Highland soldiers at that time than at any other. The event was lionised in the British press and became an icon of the qualities of the British soldier in a war that was arguably poorly managed and increasingly unpopular.
The 76th Regiment of Foot was a British Army regiment, raised in 1787. Under the Childers Reforms it amalgamated with the 33rd Regiment to form the Duke of Wellington's Regiment in 1881.
Doughboy was a popular nickname for the American infantryman during World War I. Though the origins of the term are not certain, the nickname was still in use as of the early 1940s. Examples include the 1942 song "Johnny Doughboy Found a Rose in Ireland", recorded by Dennis Day, Kenny Baker, and Kay Kyser, among others, the 1942 musical film Johnny Doughboy, and the character "Johnny Doughboy" in Military Comics. It was gradually replaced during World War II by "G.I."
The Battle of Abu Klea, also known as the Battle of Abu Tulayh, took place between 16 and 18 January 1885, at Abu Klea, Sudan, between the British Desert Column and Mahdist forces encamped near Abu Klea. The Desert Column, a force of approximately 1,400 soldiers, started from Korti, Sudan on 30 December 1884; the Desert Column's mission, in a joint effort titled the "Gordon Relief Expedition", was to march across the Bayuda Desert to the aid of General Charles George Gordon at Khartoum, Sudan, who was besieged there by Mahdist forces.
Thomas, Tom, or Tommy Atkins may refer to:
The Barrack-Room Ballads are a series of songs and poems by Rudyard Kipling, dealing with the late-Victorian British Army and mostly written in a vernacular dialect. The series contains some of Kipling's best-known works, including the poems "Gunga Din", "Tommy", "Mandalay", and "Danny Deever", helping consolidate his early fame as a poet.
Field Marshal Stapleton Cotton, 1st Viscount Combermere, was a British Army officer, diplomat and politician. As a junior officer, he took part in the Flanders Campaign, in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War and in the suppression of Robert Emmet's insurrection in 1803. He commanded a cavalry brigade in Sir Arthur Wellesley's Army before being given overall command of the cavalry in the latter stages of the Peninsular War. He went on to be Commander-in-Chief, Ireland and then Commander-in-Chief, India. In the latter role he stormed Bharatpur—a fort which previously had been deemed impregnable.
"Fuzzy-Wuzzy" is a poem by the English author and poet Rudyard Kipling, published in 1892 as part of Barrack Room Ballads. It describes the respect of the ordinary soldier for the bravery of the Hadendoa warriors who fought the British army in Sudan and Eritrea.
"Danny Deever" is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, one of the first of the Barrack-Room Ballads. It received wide critical and popular acclaim, and is often regarded as one of the most significant pieces of Kipling's early verse. The poem, a ballad, describes the execution of a British soldier in India for murder. His execution is viewed by his regiment, paraded to watch it, and the poem is composed of the comments they exchange as they see him hanged.
The Cardwell Reforms were a series of reforms of the British Army undertaken by Secretary of State for War Edward Cardwell between 1868 and 1874 with the support of Liberal prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. Gladstone paid little attention to military affairs but he was keen on efficiency. In 1870, he pushed through Parliament major changes in Army organisation. The German Empire's stunning triumph over the Second French Empire in the Franco-Prussian War proved that the Prussian system of professional soldiers with up-to-date weapons was far superior to the traditional system of gentlemen-soldiers that Britain used.
The Battle of Boxtel was fought in the Duchy of Brabant on 14–15 September 1794, during the War of the First Coalition. It was part of the Flanders Campaign of 1793–94 in which British, Dutch and Austrian troops had attempted to launch an invasion of France through Flanders. It is often remembered as being the debut action of Arthur Wellesley, who later became the 1st Duke of Wellington.
In the British Army, a gentleman ranker is an enlisted soldier who is suited through education and social background to be a commissioned officer, or indeed a former commissioned officer. Rudyard Kipling titled one of his poems, which was published in 1892, "Gentlemen-Rankers".
Rudyard Kipling introduces, in the story The Three Musketeers (1888) three characters who were to reappear in many stories, and to give their name to his next collection Soldiers Three. Their characters are given in the sentence that follows: "Collectively, I think, but am not certain, they are the worst men in the regiment so far as genial blackguardism goes"—that is, they are trouble to authority, and always on the lookout for petty gain; but Kipling is at pains never to suggest that they are evil or immoral. They are representative of the admiration he has for the British Army—which he never sought to idealise as in any way perfect—as in the poems collected in Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), and also show his interest in, and respect for the "uneducated" classes. Kipling had great respect for the independence of mind, initiative and common sense of the three—and their cunning.
"The King's Pilgrimage" is a poem and book about the journey made by King George V in May 1922 to visit the World War I cemeteries and memorials being constructed at the time in France and Belgium by the Imperial War Graves Commission. This journey was part of the wider pilgrimage movement that saw tens of thousands of bereaved relatives from the United Kingdom and the Empire visit the battlefields of the Great War in the years that followed the Armistice. The poem was written by the British author and poet Rudyard Kipling, while the text in the book is attributed to the Australian journalist and author Frank Fox. Aspects of the pilgrimage were also described by Kipling within the short story "The Debt" (1930).
John Kipling was the only son of British author Rudyard Kipling. In the First World War, his father used his influence to get him a commission in the British Army despite being decisively rejected for poor eyesight. His death at the Battle of Loos caused his family immense grief.
"Tommy" is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, reprinted in his 1892 Barrack-Room Ballads. The poem addresses the ordinary British soldier of Kipling's time in a sympathetic manner. It is written from the point of view of such a soldier, and contrasts the treatment they receive from the general public during peace and during war.
A Choice of Kipling's Verse, made by T. S. Eliot, with an essay on Rudyard Kipling is a book first published in December 1941. It is in two parts. The first part is an essay by American-born British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), in which he discusses the nature and stature of British poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). The second part consists of Eliot's selection from Kipling's poems.
Private George Flaxman of the Leicestershire Regiment was hanged at Lucknow maidan on 10 January 1887. He had been convicted by court-martial of the murder of Lance Sergeant William Carmody of the same regiment on or around 9 September 1886. The event may have inspired Rudyard Kipling's poem "Danny Deever", which describes similar events.
