How the Worcestershire Yeomanry went from cavalry charges to falling from the sky

ON April 29 1794, an important meeting was held at the Guildhall in Worcester to discuss the defence of the county.

The French had executed their king and a quarter of a million Frenchmen were now armed. Britain was worried by the events across the Channel and Worcestershire raised £6,000 to boost the local militia.

King George III also gave permission to form a Yeomanry Cavalry Regiment.

Over the summer, the Worcestershire Yeomanry was created. By October 25 Captain John Somers-Cocks and Lieutenant Thomas Spooner were parading this new force in front of the Unicorn Inn in Angel Place, Worcester.

The Worcestershire Yeomanry trained regularly on Kempsey Ham and Pitchcroft Meadow.

They were ready to charge into action if there was a French Invasion or if civil unrest broke out in the County. They were called out numerous times to deal with riotous mobs in Worcester, dispersing mutinous nailmakers in Bromsgrove and angry groups in Dudley.

In 1837 Queen Victoria gave the Regiment its ‘Royal’ status – The Queen’s Own Worcestershire Hussars. This was recognition of the time they had escorted the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria through Worcestershire in 1832.

However, every time French invasion threats subsided, the regiment’s future looked bleak and many units were being disbanded.

However, the local gentry paid out of their own pockets to equip and recruit one of the strongest Yeomanry units in Britain.

In 1899 the Yeomanry were called on to join the Imperial Yeomanry Cavalry, as it was being sent abroad to fight in what would be called the Second Boer War.

The Yeomanry Jewel by Faberge

The Countess Dudley handed each volunteer a sprig of Pear Blossom, to remind them of their beautiful and fruitful county whilst they were away. When they returned from active service, she handed the regiment the famous and precious Faberge Pear Blossom Jewel (valued on the Antiques Road Show at £1 Million).

The county prepared for future wars by continuing to train regularly and building a new riding school within the city in Barbourne in 1912.

A global, industrial war arrived in the summer of 1914 and despite yeomanry not requiring swords, the Earl of Dudley purchased swords for every man.

After a short period in Norfolk, the regiment landed in Egypt, before being sent to Gallipoli, acting as infantry.

Yeoman and war horse in the desert during the Great War

In 1916 they returned to Egypt and were tasked with guarding the Suez Canal and then pushing east across the Sinai Desert towards Palestine.

This saw the yeomanry take part in some vicious fighting at Oghratina and Qatia on Easter Sunday 1916.

A year later at Huj, the regiment took part in one of the last cavalry charges in history, echoing the Charge of the Light Brigade.

When the war ended, only three officers and 27 other ranks from the original regiment that went to war in 1915 returned home.

Warfare had changed dramatically from the days of being a policing force in 1794. In the 1920s the yeomanry began to retrain as artillery and in 1938 became the 53rd Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery.

As a Second World War began the regiment joined the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium, to stem the German Blitzkrieg.

The regiment fought heroically to protect the retreat to Dunkirk and were praised for having destroyed the most enemy tanks in the entire Expeditionary Force.

In 1943 the regiment was then made into the 53rd Air Landing, Light Regiment, Royal Artillery.

This saw it deployed with the 6th Airborne Division, landing on D Day. One battery landed by gliders and were firing at enemy targets in Normandy straight away.

They went on to be the first British artillery unit to drop shells on German soil in the Rhine Crossing.

In the years that followed, the Worcestershire Yeomanry took to policing Palestine, as they had done in Britain in the 18th century and then with a number of reforms, amalgamations and cut backs the regiment began to lose most of its county links.

The regiment lives on within a number of modern day units including the 54th (Queens Own Warwickshire and Worcestershire Yeomanry) Support Squadron based in Redditch, part of 37 Signals Regiment and B Squadron of the Royal Yeomanry.

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