A few words about the title of the book: Those Must Be The Guards. In March 1919 the Guards marched through London as part of the great victory parade. The Times reported rather grandly on the event:
‘A joyous welcome to the Guards ….. fighting through to the end and in all those years, fiercer and more terrible than men have ever seen, they proved worthy of their ancient fame…. To tell the story of the Guards regiments would be to tell our military history since the days of Charles II and of Cromwell. There is no grander witness to their character than the story of how Sir John Moore recognized them in the disastrous retreat to Corunna. Eighteen days of retreat had reduced the rest of his army to a rabble. As the General watched the disorderly mass, he heard the drums. “Those” …….. he said, “Must be the Guards”. And presently the Guards came by, with their drum major twirling his staff in front, their drums beating, and sergeants at their posts’.
The Times’ words and phrases, Churchillian in style, went on to say: ‘That is how great soldiers bear themselves in the darkest hours of war. That is how our Guards bore themselves in 1809, and how they have borne themselves in the dread struggle they have lately crowned with victory. To such men no welcome can be too generous and no tribute too high’.
There is much emphasis here on the Guards, a comparatively small part of the British Expeditionary Force, an observation that was made in the readers’ comments when The Times’ article was re-printed in 2019. However, this misses the point. Of course the Guards did not win the war single-handedly. But they were an exemplar to all; they were “our Guards”’. As they are today.
Perhaps Winston Churchill did indeed write that piece for The Times in 1919? Already a journalist and author of some note, he was to become even more prolific in the years that followed; and he knew the Guards well. Churchill had spent several weeks on the Western Front with the Grenadiers in late 1915, an experience he never forgot. And nor did the Grenadiers. They viewed Churchill with great suspicion when he arrived dressed as a Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussar, in the aftermath of the Gallipoli fiasco, and overladen with kit. And they were not entirely welcoming either. “No one told us you were coming”, said the fearsome Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel ‘Ma’ Jeffreys.
But by the end of that short attachment there was mutual admiration all around. Churchill had charmed the Grenadiers with, to quote ‘Bulgy’ Thorne, who had escorted him to and from the front, “his character and military prescience’. While Churchill was equally impressed, as he told his wife in a letter home, with the ‘System of the Guards – their discipline, organisation, hard work, smartness, and soldierly behaviour”.
The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, was a Grenadier Guards officer during the First World War, during quite possibly one of the happiest periods of his otherwise rather sad life. His words, spoken in a speech after the war, have a more timeless quality than the 1919 tribute.
“The Guards Division” he said, “was a great club and if tinged with snobbishness, it was the snobbishness of tradition, discipline, perfection, and sacrifice. They were the shock troops of the British Army; their prestige was purchased in blood”.
Every regiment, regardless of its origins, can claim a small part of that sentiment. However it is the Guards who have been identified over the years as being a special and cherished part of our armed forces. Representative of something quintessentially British. And recognised by a much wider audience – those who know little of the tribal ways of the British Army. The Guards, like the US Marine Corps, are the closest we have to a Praetorian Guard. Always striving to ‘be the best’. Always on public display and with a huge reputation to uphold.
Simon Doughty is editor of the Guards Magazine and the author, with Paul de Zuelueta, of Those Must Be The Guards: The Household Division in Peace and War, 1969-2023, published by Osprey.