Cap of Honour: The Story of the Gloucestershire Regiment (review)

Anyone familiar with the British Army knows that one of its most fundamental elements is its regimental system. This fact has resulted in the production of thousands of volumes devoted to the history of one regiment or the other. These works range from the skeletal volumes of the Famous Regiments series, to highly detailed multivolume works of varying quality, to rare works of great historical and literary merit, such as Arthur Bryant's Jackets of Green.

Cap of Honour falls into the category of a readable, generally informative survey of one of Britain's most famous "county" regiments, the "Glorious Glosters." Largely the work of David Scott Daniell, it was later extended and expanded by Anthony Farrar-Hockley and Leo Capel, and then updated once more by Claud Rebbeck, who brings the narrative up to the regiment's amalgamation in 1994 while also smoothing out the text and adding many explanatory chapter notes.

This book is obviously meant for the general reader. There are no citation notes, even for direct quotes. No attempt has been made to write a comprehensive, scholarly study of this three-hundred-year-old institution. The author's intent is clearly to create a stirring narrative to honor the regiment and its members.

Indeed, from the point of view of the historian, Cap of Honour is plainly deficient in the following areas. First, there are no citations. Second, there is no real attempt to put the Gloucestershire Regiment into the context of the broader history of the British army over the last three centuries. Third, the text often descends into hagiography. The Glosters are universally portrayed as brave, well disciplined, and triumphant, even when they are being pounded by the enemy (the section on the retreat of the 1st Battalion from Burma in 1942 is an example of this bias, as is the blunt statement that not a single Gloster was executed for desertion or cowardice during World War I [p. 231]).

In addition, the book fails to provide clear and useful maps, so that one may follow the battles and campaigns. This omission is particularly unfortunate in the context of the Glosters' two most famous battles—that of Alexandria in Egypt in 1801, which earned the regiment the unique distinction of wearing a "back badge" on their hats, and that which was fought on the Imjin River in Korea in 1951, for which they received a U.S. Army Presidential Unit Citation (something awarded to no other British infantry regiment).

In the final analysis, for all its faults, Cap of Honour is worth reading if one is a serious student of the British Army. It is among the better regimental histories and provides a wealth of information about the life and internal workings of a very long-lived institution. However, this book will not appeal to a broader audience and that is perhaps its greatest weakness. The British regimental system has been a unique military social institution and one would have hoped for a book that would have introduced it to more than a small number of specialists.