The
Bermuda

Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (BVRC) was created in 1894 as an
all-white, racially segregated reserve for the Regular
Army
.svg/240px-British-Army-LtCol(1810-1855).svg.png)
Army infantry
component of the
Bermuda

Bermuda Garrison.[1] Renamed the
Bermuda

Bermuda Rifles in
1951, it was amalgamated into the
Bermuda

Bermuda Regiment in 1965.
Contents
1 Formation
2 The Great War
2.1 Overseas contingents
3 Between the wars
4 The Second World War
5 Post-Second World War
6 See also
7 Bibliography
8 References
9 External links
10 Part Of
Formation[edit]
Although
Bermuda

Bermuda had maintained its own militia from 1612 til the end
of the American War of 1812, it had been allowed to lapse thereafter
due to the large garrison of regular soldiers that had been
established following US independence. The reason for the military
garrison in
Bermuda

Bermuda was ultimately the protection of the Royal Naval
dockyard on Ireland Island. At the time, the primary defence was seen
to be by the coastal artillery, mounted in various batteries and
fortifications and manned by the Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA). A
voluntary reserve was created for the RGA at the same time, titled the
Bermuda

Bermuda Militia Artillery (BMA). If, despite the best efforts of the
artillery, enemy vessels succeeded in landing military forces on
Bermuda

Bermuda (which was most likely to be achieved using small boats to
cross over the reefs to reach beaches on the South Shore), the
infantry was expected to tackle them, in the worst scenario, making a
fighting withdrawal into the forts and the dockyard itself.
Bermuda

Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps cap badge
The BVRC was formed under an act of the Colonial Parliament, passed in
1892. Captain E.S.B. Evans-Lombe, of the Prince of Wales Leinster
Regiment, arrived in November, 1894, to oversee the raising of the
Corps, and became the first Adjutant. The BVRC was originally divided
into three companies (A, B, and C), one each located in the West End,
the centre, and the East End of Bermuda. Headquarters was located
centrally, where a fourth Company, D, was added. Twelve officers were
appointed, including the Commanding Officer, Major Sir Josiah Rees,
three for each of the original three companies, a Surgeon-Lieutenant
and a Chaplain. To these were added four Permanent Staff, attached
from the Regular Army, including Captain Evans-Lombe, a Regimental
Sergeant Major (RSM), and two Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO). The
mandated strength of the Corps was 300, all ranks.[2] The lowest rank
in the BVRC, as with other rifle regiments, was Rifleman, which was
equivalent to a private in a normal infantry regiment (the first rifle
regiments had been distinguished from infantry units by their weapons,
their tactics, and their green (camouflage) uniforms. When the Enfield
rifle replaced the musket as the standard weapon of the British Army,
there ceased to be any distinction between the equipment and tactics
of the infantry and those of the rifle and light infantry regiments).
Recruitment into the BVRC was restricted to white males, aged 17 to
50, although the barrier to non-whites was achieved by requiring
volunteers to be members of a rifle club. All of the private rifle
clubs, at the time, restricted their membership to whites. The terms
of service for the Bermudian volunteers were similar to those of
Volunteers in Britain. Enlistment was voluntary, and a member could
leave the Corps by giving fourteen days notice, except while embodied
for active service, or training on a military camp-when he also became
subject to Military Law. Whereas Volunteers in Britain were originally
expected to pay for their uniforms and equipment (including their
rifles), Bermudian volunteers were issued these. The uniform was rifle
green with black buttons, in conformity with other rifle regiments
throughout the Empire, but khaki uniforms were issued from 1898. A
minimum attendance at drills, and completion of annual inspection and
musketry tests, was required for a volunteer to be returned as
'efficient'. The Corps could be called out in times of War, or in
response to an invasion, but volunteers could not be sent overseas
without their consent.
The Great War[edit]
The BVRC continued to train and develop over the next two decades.
When war was declared in 1914, it was embodied to fulfill its role
within the Garrison.[3] As the economy would have suffered from taking
so many young men from their jobs, some soldiers continued to perform
their civil jobs, before taking their turns standing sentry at the
many places around
Bermuda

Bermuda that the BVRC guarded. The primary task the
BVRC was given was guarding the coastline but it filled other roles,
the most important of which was as a staging point for trans-Atlantic
convoys, overseen from the Royal Navy's dockyard on Ireland Island.
Overseas contingents[edit]
Bullock's Boys. The First Contingent of the BVRC to the Lincolns,
training in
Bermuda

Bermuda for the Western Front, Winter 1914–15.
Despite operating under this constraint, the BVRC quickly formed a
detachment in December, 1914, to send overseas to the Western
Front.[4][5][6] This contingent was composed of volunteers who were
already serving, as well as those who enlisted specifically for the
Front. The Contingent trained at Warwick Camp through the winter and
spring. It consisted of Captain Richard Tucker and 88 other
ranks.[7][8] As there was a shortage of officers, the Governor and
Commander-in-Chief, Lieutenant-General Sir George Bullock, filled the
role of Adjutant, a position normally filled by a Captain. As a
consequence, the contingent was popularly known as Bullock's Boys.
The Contingent left
Bermuda

Bermuda for England in June 1915, travelling to
Canada, then crossing the Atlantic in company with a much larger
Canadian draft.[9] It had been hoped that the Contingent could be
attached to the Second Battalion of The Lincolnshire Regiment (2
Lincolns), which had been on Garrison in
Bermuda

Bermuda when the War began.
When the Contingent arrived at the Lincolns depot in Grimsby, the 2nd
Battalion was already in France and it was attached to 3 Lincolns
instead (at least one Bermudian, though not from the BVRC, Corporal
G.C. Wailes, did serve with the 2nd Lincolns).[10][11] Although
commanders at the Regimental Depot had wanted to break the Contingent
apart, re-enlist its members as Lincolns, and distribute them as
replacements, a letter from the War Office ensured that they remained
together as a unit, under their own badge. The contingent was attached
to 1 Lincolns (although its men remained on the strength of 3
Lincolns) as an extra company, and arrived in France in July 1915, the
first colonial volunteer unit to reach the Front. The contingent
remained as such until the following summer, by when its strength had
been too reduced by casualties to compose a full company, having lost
50 percent of its remaining strength at
Gueudecourt

Gueudecourt on 25 September
1916.
The survivors of the First Contingent were merged with a Second
Contingent, of one officer and 36 other ranks, who had trained in
Bermuda

Bermuda as Vickers machine gunners, which had recently arrived from
Bermuda. The Second Contingent was stripped of its Vickers machine
guns (which had been collected, in the Army, under a new regiment, the
Machine Gun Corps). The merged contingents were retrained as Lewis
light machinegunners, and provided 12 gun teams to 1 Lincolns
headquarters. By the War's end, the two contingents had lost over 75
percent of their combined strength. Forty had died on active service,
one received the
O.B.E

O.B.E and six the Military Medal. Sixteen private
soldiers from the two contingents were commissioned, including the
Sergeant Major of the First Contingent, Colour-Sergeant R. C. Earl,
who became Commanding Officer of the BVRC after the war. Some of those
commissioned moved to other units in the process, including flying ace
Arthur Rowe Spurling and Henry J. Watlington, who both went to the
Royal Flying Corps

Royal Flying Corps (at least seventeen other Bermudians served the
RFC, including another BVRC rifleman, later Major Cecil
Montgomery-Moore, who detached from the Corps in
Bermuda

Bermuda and earned
the Distinguished Flying Cross in France. An NCO from the overseas
contingent also transferred to the RFC).
By the end of the war, the BVRC had earned the battle honours Ypres
1915, Neuve Chapelle, Loos, Somme 1916, Ypres 1917, Lys, Hindenburg
Line, Messines 1917, Somme 1918. They had not seen the last of
warfare, however. In 1918, the 1 Lincolns were withdrawn from France
and sent to Ireland to combat the army of the Irish Republic, declared
in 1916. The BVRC benefited from
Army
.svg/240px-British-Army-LtCol(1810-1855).svg.png)
Army Order No.1, which increased the
pay of most soldiers in the British Army—but that same Order did not
benefit the British West Indies Regiment, which was treated as being
"native".
Between the wars[edit]
At the end of the First World War, both the BVRC and BMA were
demobilised and disembodied, though both were soon rebuilt through new
recruitment. Many former members of the BVRC re-enlisted. In Britain,
the Volunteer Force had been re-organised in 1908, absorbing the
remaining militia and Yeomanry units, to form the Territorial Army
(TA). Among other changes, the TA introduced terms of service. A
volunteer could no longer quit with fourteen days notice, but had to
complete the term for which he was enlisted, as was the case for
professional soldiers in the British Army.
The re-embodied BVRC was re-organised as a Territorial, although it
remained nominally a Volunteer unit. Its association with the
Lincolnshire Regiment was made official, with the Lincolns taking on
the paternal role it played with its own Territorial battalions. A
third local Territorial, the
Bermuda

Bermuda Volunteer Engineers (BVE), was
formed in 1931 to man Defence Electric Lights at coastal batteries,
and absorbed the signals section of the BVRC a decade later.
The Regular
Army
.svg/240px-British-Army-LtCol(1810-1855).svg.png)
Army artillery and engineering detachments to the garrison
were withdrawn in 1928, with the BMA and BVE, respectively, assuming
complete responsibility for their vacated roles. There would no longer
be a full infantry battalion in Bermuda. Instead, a detached company
would be provided from the battalion sent to Jamaica.
The Second World War[edit]
BVRC Plaque at The Armoury Building in Hamilton, Bermuda,
commemorating the unit's service from 1894 to 1946, when it was
reduced to a skeleton staff (which would be expanded to a full unit
again in 1951, retitled the
Bermuda

Bermuda Rifles).
The BVRC began mobilisation on 3 September 1939, even before news was
received of the declaration of war, when Britain issued Germany with
an ultimatum to withdraw from Poland. As in the previous war, it took
up positions guarding the coastlines, but its duties soon grew more
numerous. Members of the Territorials were called up for the duration,
and conscription was introduced to increase their strengths in
October, 1940. Another infantry unit, the
Bermuda

Bermuda Militia Infantry,
had been raised in October, 1939, recruiting blacks, and linked
administratively with the BMA. The infantry duties of the Garrison
were split between these two Territorials, and the detachment from the
2nd Battalion,
King's Shropshire Light Infantry

King's Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI) at Prospect
Camp. Also as in the previous war, a Contingent was soon detached,
composed of volunteers for service at sharper ends of the War. A few
members of the BVE and the BMA travelled with this contingent to
England, where the BVRC members were re-enlisted into the Lincolnshire
Regiment. This Contingent included two officers, Robert
Brownlow-Tucker and Anthony 'Toby' Smith, who became Company
Commanders in the Lincolns before the War's end. They were among four
Bermudians who would reach the rank of Major with the Lincolns
(although one, Glyn Gilbert, never served in the BVRC). Due to fears
of stripping the Garrison, a moratorium was placed on further drafts
being sent overseas from Bermudian units. This moratorium was not
lifted until 1943, when both the BVRC and the
Bermuda

Bermuda Militia (the BMI
and BMA together) detached contingents to send overseas. The two
contingents trained together at Prospect Camp, before going their
separate ways. The BVRC left
Bermuda

Bermuda in May, 1944, to join the
Lincolns in England. The contingent members were rebadged as Lincolns,
and most joined 2 Lincolns in Belgium, as the Allies advanced into
North-West Europe. They had travelled as part of a Company of
reinforcements under the command of Bermudian Major 'Toby' Smith, who
was killed-in-action shortly after, along with three other Bermudians.
While in England, eleven of second contingent had volunteered to join
the Airborne Division, training as parachutists.
Post-Second World War[edit]
Battle Dress

Battle Dress was the standard field uniform for Bermudian Territorials
in the 1940s and 1950s, but tropical dress was worn in the summer
months. After the Second World War, the
Bermuda

Bermuda Rifles also took to
wearing Dennison parachute smocks.
After the War, the BVRC men, who had travelled to Europe as units,
returned individually, as each waited for his 'number' to come up. The
BVRC and the BMA sent contingents to the Victory Parade in London. In
1946, however, both units were demobilised and reduced to skeleton
command structures. The other two Territorials were both disbanded,
but the BVRC and BMA were brought back up to strength in 1951. At that
time, the BVRC was retitled the
Bermuda

Bermuda Rifles. The loss of the word
'volunteer' was probably prudent, as conscription was re-introduced to
both units. In 1953, it was announced that the HM Dockyard would be
closed. This meant that the military garrison, which had existed
primarily to guard the naval base, would be closed, also. The last
Regular
Army
.svg/240px-British-Army-LtCol(1810-1855).svg.png)
Army unit (a detchment of the Duke of Cornwall's Light
Infantry) was withdrawn by 1955, and the Dockyard closed in 1958. 1953
was also the last year of the Imperial Defence Plan, under which the
Bermudian units had been tasked, and the year in which the last of the
coastal artillery was taken out of use. The BMA, while still wearing
Royal Artillery uniform and cap badge, converted to the infantry role.
With no tasking under the War Office, and its successor, the Ministry
of Defence, or under NATO, both units might have been disbanded, but
the
Bermuda

Bermuda Government, for reasons of its own, chose to maintain them
entirely at its own expense.
US President JF Kennedy inspects
Bermuda

Bermuda Rifles in 1961
A new role began to appear as
Bermuda

Bermuda moved into the 1960s, when
increasing tension resulting from the racial division and inequity of
Bermudian society occasionally spilled over into violence. By then, it
was rapidly becoming politically, as well as economically, inexpedient
to maintain two, racially divided infantry units. As a result, the
Bermuda

Bermuda Rifles and the
Bermuda

Bermuda Militia Artillery were amalgamated in
September, 1965, to form the
Bermuda

Bermuda Regiment.
The
Bermuda

Bermuda Regiment badge is a combination of the
Maltese Cross

Maltese Cross of
the BVRC badge, and the field gun of the Royal Artillery badge. The
unit maintains the history and traditions of both of its
predecessors.However the Battle Honors of the BVRC were not passed
on.This is due to the stand down between 1946 and 1948. Attempts to
rectify this have not been successful due to strict British Army
policies in regards to those honors.
Originally, the part-time reserve units in Bermuda, the Channel
Islands and
Malta

Malta had numbered collectively as 28th in the British
Army
.svg/240px-British-Army-LtCol(1810-1855).svg.png)
Army order of precedence, but were ordered within that according to
the placement of their parent corps in the regular army. This meant,
that the
Bermuda

Bermuda Militia Artillery (BMA), as part of the Royal
Regiment of Artillery, preceded the
Bermuda

Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps
(BVRC) despite being the second of the two to be raised. Today, the
Bermuda

Bermuda Regiment, as an amalgam of the BMA and BVRC, is 28th.[12]
See also[edit]
Regular
Army
.svg/240px-British-Army-LtCol(1810-1855).svg.png)
Army in Bermuda, 1701–1955
Bermuda

Bermuda Militias 1612-1815
Volunteer Force (Great Britain)
British Army
Bibliography[edit]
"Defence, Not Defiance: A History Of The
Bermuda

Bermuda Volunteer Rifle
Corps", Jennifer M. Ingham (now Jennifer M. Hind),
ISBN 0-9696517-1-6. Printed by The Island Press Ltd., Pembroke,
Bermuda.
"
Bermuda

Bermuda Forts 1612–1957", Dr. Edward C. Harris, The Bermuda
Maritime Museum Press, The
Bermuda

Bermuda Maritime Museum, P.O. Box MA 133,
Mangrove Bay,
Bermuda

Bermuda MA BX.
"Bulwark Of Empire: Bermuda's Fortified Naval Base 1860-1920",
Lt.-Col. Roger Willock, USMC, The
Bermuda

Bermuda Maritime Museum Press, The
Bermuda

Bermuda Maritime Museum, P.O. Box MA 133, Mangrove Bay,
Bermuda

Bermuda MA BX.
"Flying Boats Of Bermuda", Sqn.-Ldr. Colin A. Pomeroy,
ISBN 0-9698332-4-5, Printlink, PO Box 937, Hamilton,
Bermuda

Bermuda HM
DX.
"
Bermuda

Bermuda From Sail To Steam: The History Of The Island From 1784 to
1901", Dr. Henry Wilkinson, Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon
Street, Oxford, UK OX2 6DP.
References[edit]
^ Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early
Twentieth-Century America by Winston James, Verso, 1998, p. 62.
^ "Defence, Not Defiance: A History Of The
Bermuda

Bermuda Volunteer Rifle
Corps", Jennifer M. Ingham (now Jennifer M. Hind),
ISBN 0-9696517-1-6. Printed by The Island Press Ltd., Pembroke,
Bermuda.
^ The Royal Gazette, 6 August 1914: Government Notices. A Proclomation
[sic] (Marital Law Regulations).
^ The Royal Gazette, 8 December 1914: B.V.R.C. 100 Men Accepted for
Service. Camp Training Begins To-day.
^ The Royal Gazette: B.V.R.C. Contingent. List of Volunteers for the
Front. Training in Warwick Camp. March Through Hamilton. A Few More
Needed for Company.
^ The Royal Gazette, 21 January 1915: B.V.R.C. Contingent Take Tea at
the Little Green Door.
^ The Royal Gazette, 26 January 1915: B.V.R.C. The Active Service
Contingent. Memorandum From His Excellency The Governor. Appeal For
Recruits.
^ "Two Generations from St. David's". The Royal Gazette. 6 May
1915.
^ "The B.V.R.C. War Contingent (arrived in England)". The Royal
Gazette. 29 May 1915.
^ The Royal Gazette, 29 December 1914: Corporal Wailes Wounded.
^ The Royal Gazette, 27 April 1915: Corporal G. Wailes. The First to
Return.
^ The Quarterly
Army
.svg/240px-British-Army-LtCol(1810-1855).svg.png)
Army List, December 1946. Corrected generally to 8
October 1946. Volume 1. Page 14. Order of Precedence of Regiments,
etc., in the Army. His Majesty's Stationery Office, London.
External links[edit]
POTSI (archived): BVRC Images
Bermuda

Bermuda Military History
Bermuda

Bermuda Online: Bermuda's War Veterans
Research Press: Volunteer Infantry
Lincoln Branch, The Royal Lincolnshire & Royal Anglian Regimental
Association.
Part Of[edit]
Bermuda

Bermuda Military of
Bermuda

Bermuda
Bermuda

Bermuda Volunteer/Territorial
Army
.svg/240px-British-Army-LtCol(1810-1855).svg.png)
Army Uni