July

The museum tracks the history of the British Army from the Middle Ages, through two world wars, to the present day. Displays include a reproduction First World War trench, a huge model of the Battle of Waterloo, a lamp used by Florence Nightingale and life-like models of an Agincourt archer and SAS troopers. The reading rooms contain numerous accounts, letters, maps, and documents relating to the Anglo-Sikh Wars, including the original battle maps, and letters written from the line.

The Bengal Military Police Battalion raised in January 1856 by Capt T Rattray consisted of 500 cavalry and 1000 infantry. It is said that Captain Thomas Rattray, who founded the regiment went through the villages challenging men to wrestle with him. The Sikhs couldn’t resist the offer, but the condition was that they had to join up.

With the distinct checkered tartan frontispiece worn over their turbans, the Rattrays Sikhs had a unique and distinct identity of their own. Having first seen action during the Mutiny of 1857, the battalion served throughout the World Wars, and even today remains a front line infantry battalion of the Indian Army.

“The proudest boasts of the Regiment are that no Regiments of the Indian Army did more actual front line work and hard fighting, that it never lost a yard of trench in any theatre of war, that on no occasion was it ever withdrawn for reconstruction, …that no Regiment was more often specially mentioned in dispatches, and, finally that on returning to India after conclusion of the War, it was the only unit of the Indian Army given the Honor of a royal Colonel in Chief in recognition of its services during the War.”

Sir John Maynard, 47th Sikh’s War Records, The Great War, 1914-1918