Information on the 24th (1st & 2nd Warwickshire) Pre Zulu War

Im probably more guilty than most in recommending Col Snook MBE. I hear what the comments are and I agree with most of them, he is an opinianated arrogant verbose man. BUT, I have sat on the battlefield and read the book, in fact on top of the Koppie and his theory works. You do need to look passed the conversations he invents and also the total bias towards his regiment. As a military man he is outstanding, simple fact.
Martin read it again, its well worth it.

Cheers

Hi Frank.

Yes, Gary says I should read the battle part, so I guess I will have to make the effort and give it a go.

I went back to the link posted by Steve and read what he had replied to Patrick, what a load of codswallop he comes out with, I am very tempted to join the VWF so that I can 'correct' him on his reply to Patrick.

He says he is a 'borderer', neither English nor Welsh, born and raised in Monmouth, yeah right! you can tell right away with his reply to Patrick that he is firmly in the Welsh camp. He says that it is a fact that plenty of Englishmen have a dislike of the Welsh, ummm! I think that it can also be said that the Welsh hold a well established historic hatred of the English, but he does not mention that in his reply to Patrick does he, I wonder why. He also wants to get his 'facts' about Monmouth correct before blabbing off about it being Welsh, and calling people names like charlatan.

I could tear his reply to Patrick to shreads if I was a member of the VWF, so you know Frank mate, I am tempted to sign up just to correct his deliberately misleading errors designed to throw Patrick (and no doubt other readers) off the scent. I wonder if he realises that he himself is being a 'charlatan' by using the Monmouthshire trick and other smoke and mirror tactics in his reply.

I think that the Welsh hatred of the English can be shown in both the Baker film and the Griffiths doco, where everything leans towards the Welsh with hardly any mention of the English except of course to belittle them. The real name of the regiment was ignored in both film and doco, both made the regiment into an all Welsh affair, there was plenty mention of 'Welshness' in both film and doco, and this was deliberately done to make the viewer believe that RD was indeed an all Welsh affair, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Mike Snook must know all this, yet he also deliberately tries to throw anyone off the scent by using smoke and mirror tactics in an attempt to keep the 'accepted norm' about the regiment being mostly Welsh, when he knows that it most certainly was not.

The Englishmen and their regiment, the 24th (2nd Warwickshire) regiment, have taken a back seat for far too long on this matter, and it is about time that they got the recognition and honour for their action and bravery at the defence of RD, why the hell should the Welsh steal their glory and get all the credit for something that only a handful of them took part in, and those that keep this myth alive and kicking should hang their head in shame.

If ever Britain is devolved into seperate nations again, and England brings her regiments back to their real homeland, then there will be no regiments left in Wales at all (except maybe militias). The 23rd Shropshire, 24th Kent, 41st Chelsea invalids, 69th the old 2nd Batt of the 24th, meaning that the Royal 'Welsh' are not all that 'Welsh' in origin after all are they? So you see, if it wasn't for the good old English, the Royal 'Welsh' would not even exist.

Cheers mate.

Martin

Both barrels eh! Knew you couldn't resist.

But hold on, Snook says that the majority of people in the 24th (like any other regiment) were likely to be Irish, not English or Welsh - he is probably right.

He also accuses Baker of overplaying the Welsh hand in the film and calls the Men of Harlech episode utterly preposterous!  

So he is not in the Welsh camp really, he is responding to the Al Murray gag that the RD defenders were all from Birmingham !

My friendly advice - don't go there. And I don't mean Birmingham.

Steve

Why should'nt he go there? iv'e been there and gave him a good kicking in the past!
you are an admirer, i get that! but anyone has the right to say what one feel's! its
called free speech..i happen to agree that its best Martin does not confront Mr Snook
head on, it would serve no useful purpose and only elevate blood pressure! Steve
please accept that the man has a marmite air!

Les

My advice not to go there is for the very reasons you give old chum. Not a question of rights. And I'm not an admirer, he is just interesting.  

Steve

Fair enough Steve, instantly understood and accepted!   

Hi Steve.

Sorry mate, I'm not buying the Irish bit at all. I am not saying that there were no Irishmen amongst the ranks of the regiments at the time, but a quick check of the men of the 24th (2nd Warwickshire) regiment who fought at RD will show you that there were around 14/15 Welsh, 15/16 Irish, 1 Scot and the rest being English. If you check Ian Knight's book Zulu war companion, you will see that he quotes that the regiments at the time were made up of mainly Englishmen with some Irish and a few Scots and Welsh. My copy is not at hand at the moment so I can't give you the page number, but it is towards the rear of the book.

Yes he does say that Baker overdid the Welsh bit and that the MoH bit was preposterous, but anyone with an ounce of brain knows that you don't stop in the middle of a battle to have a singing contest, besides, the regiments song at the time was The Warwickshire Lad, so why would they have been singing MoH, it was just a ploy by Baker to add to the impression that the regiment was Welsh.

No mate, I thought about it for sometime and was tempted, but won't be bothering with the VWF, if Patrick wants to get some proper information, he should think about joining this forum.

Cheers mate.

Good call.

Steve

Great stuff Les, a good kicking, LOL

That is what I had in mind when I contemplated joining the VWF, a good boot up the pants, LOL.

Cheers buddy.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.!

Still waiting for the list of books you have written Martin!

Good post Springbok.

ctsg.

Cheeky sod, I replied to your post earlier, go to page one and read it.

Hi Martin
Ian Knight's reference to Welsh numbers in the War are on pages 222-223 of  'Companion To The AZW '.
Cheers 90th

PS
As an aside I checked Robert Hope's book on the 80th Regt regarding Irish & Welsh Recruits ; page 338
Northern Ireland as it now exists provided 44 men ( 4% ) ( 6 Counties ) . 81 men ( 7 % ) were born in what is now Eire ( 25 Counties ) . Wales provided 13 men ( 1 % ) ( 8 Counties ) .

Hi Gary mate.

Just checked in to see what was going on before going back to bed (can't sleep proper with this heat wave we seem to be having, get all clammy in bed, so I got up to make a brew and have a fag).

Thanks for the page numbers buddy, and I think that the low percentage from Ireland and Wales is a good guide to the whole of the British Army at the time, and shows that Mike Snook is totally wrong with his reckoning that most men were likely to have been Irish.

Right mate, I am off back to bed, I hope I can get some sleep this time.

Cheers mate.   

Hi Martin
I heard you were going to have a heat wave ! , they mentioned temps between 26 - 29 from memory ! , mate , thats a nice day    , no heatwave there , wait till you get 38 - 43 !    , thats a bloody heatwave ! Lol      . Hope you manage to drop off ok , I was wondering when I saw you were on line , why you were up so late    
Cheers 90th  

Hi Gary.

When (if) the sun shines here we try to make the best of it (we don't see it all that often), and if the temps go up by a few degrees above average, then that is a heat wave here, LOL.

Yes mate, I did get back over eventually, I hate it when the bed covers stick to you, and if you have the window open you get night moths and other bugs flying in, and the early morning risers wake you up banging their car doors and starting up their engines and revving them, also early morning dog walkers always seem to let their dogs bark just when they are passing by the house. The young car drivers are the worst ones, they go past the houses with their radios on full and their windows down, all you hear is the very loud thump, bump, thump, of their so called music, what a flaming racket, music? they haven't a clue what music is. Now on the other hand, if they had listened to the proms the other night, they would have heard Beethoven's 6th symphony (Pastoral), absolutely brilliant, now that is music.

Cheers Buddy.