BAR Summer 2010

70
The Regimental System in the British Army - 1685-2010
Lieutenant Colonel Jim Storr PhD

In 2006 the British Army undertook a seemingly major change to the way it
mans its infantry units. That change constituted what was considered to be a
major modification to its regimental system. Was it a major modification?
What was it? What can we learn from that process? These questions are not
merely of intellectual interest. They relate to operational effectiveness. Armies
vary considerably in their effectiveness on the battlefield, and much of that
variation depends on differences between human issues such as the way they
raise and man their units; their personnel selection, promotion and
assignment policies; and so on.
Characteristics which are widely held to be significant, such as leadership,
esprit de corps and morale, do not just happen. They arise, and are
sustained, for tangible (if poorly understood) reasons.
To answer those questions we shall consider three areas of research: military
history; behavioural human sciences as relevant to operational effectiveness2;
and a series of structured interviews conducted for this study3. Those
interviews looked in detail at one of the amalgamations conducted in 2006,
but revealed interesting insights into both the process of restructuring and the
regimental system as a whole. We will, firstly, take a brief overview of the
history of the British infantry. We will then discuss the question of operational
effectiveness in infantry units (and British infantry units in particular). We shall
consider the circumstances of the 2006 restructuring; review the key issues;
and then draw some conclusions. We will concentrates almost exclusively on
infantry units, since the infantry is considered to be the core of the British
army’ s regimental system and because the 2006 amalgamations only affected
infantry units.
History The modern British Army has its roots in the English Civil War of
1641-51.
By the early 1680s there were about half a dozen infantry battalions in the
Army. All were paid for more-or-less directly by the King. As a result of
Monmouth’ s Rebellion and the wider geopolitical situation, it was decided to
sustain a properly established, standing army. The regiments raised by the
Crown to suppress the rebellion (and one rebel regiment) formed its core.
After protracted discussion, it was agreed that the army would serve the King
but be paid for by Parliament. Given the political atmosphere which followed
the Civil War, that was a significant development. A force of about 20
battalions and half a dozen cavalry regiments resulted.
The Marlburian Wars of 1704-11 forged that Army into a highly effective force.
Many of its units served on the continent of Europe continuously for seven
years. They fought four major battles (Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and
Malplaquet) and conducted several sieges. Shortly afterwards the ‘ regular’
army suppressed the first Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland in 1715, and several
of its units were awarded honorific titles as a result.
Published historical research has identified families of officers who have
served in regiments continuously since Marlborough’ s Wars. Unpublished
research can identify families who had fought for the King in the English Civil
War and who then raised companies and troops for the King for Monmouth’ s
Rebellion. Some of them then continued to serve in the Regular Army.
Britain fought many wars in the 18th Century, almost invariably successfully.
Its army expanded during wartime and sometimes shrank thereafter. For
example, there were at least two different 30th Regiments of Foot. However,
by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 the Regular Army consisted of
about 110 infantry battalions and 20 cavalry regiments.
Throughout this period military service was almost always with the colours of
one unit, except for officers of the rank of colonel and above. There were
virtually no training units nor staffs. Officers and soldiers served continuously
with one unit and travelled with it wherever it went.
Increasingly, that meant almost anywhere in the world.
From the Army’ s perspective, much of the 19th Century was taken up with
colonial conquest, colonial policing, and small wars. Increasing commitments
overseas lead to a gradual increase to about 130 battalions.
The pattern of service was modified by the early 1880s to the system of
‘Cardwell Pairs’, named after a Minister of War. Under the Cardwell system,
named regiments of two battalions maintained one battalion overseas and
one at home, often collocated with a small training depot. The foreign service
battalion served abroad for five years at a time, and was kept up to strength
with drafts from the depot or the home service battalion. When one battalion
returned to Britain, the other deployed overseas. There was still very little
service outside the regiment and relatively little mixing between battalions.
The named regiments were either formed from amalgamations of numbered
regiments (which had by definition only consisted of a single battalion); or, in
the case of the Guards and the 25 most senior regiments, by forming a
second battalion. This heralded the era of ‘ county’regiments. In some cases
the regiments concerned had absolutely no prior connection with the counties
whose name they took in 1881. In some cases where numbered regiments
were paired, even by the beginning of the First World War, officers of one
battalion had no practical affinity with those of the other battalion. That was
more than 30 years after the Cardwell reforms.
This seems to have had no practical impact on operational effectiveness.
In simple terms, most of the regular infantry battalions were bled white in the
early months of the First World War. Britain formed a new and highly effective
army from what remained of the Regulars, twelve divisions of Territorials, over
five hundred thousand volunteers, and many tens of thousands of conscripts.
Raising, training, equipping and sustaining that army, then leading it to victory,
in the middle of a major war was quite an astonishing achievement. It clearly
demonstrates that the ‘ lions led by donkeys’school of British First World War
history is wrong.
In France, from August 8th 1918, a very well trained and equipped force of 55
British divisions (together with invaluable contributions from the Australian,
Canadian and New Zealand armies), took on and broke the will of the German
Army. During that three-month period it took more prisoners than the French,
Belgian and American armies combined. It advanced more than 120 miles:
every step of it on foot.
The regimental system was a critical part of that success, but the ‘regimental
system’of 1918 was very different from that of 1914. All pre-war territorial
battalions had been affiliated to Regular regiments, which provided the
training cadre. As an example, the Liverpool Scottish was the 10th Battalion,
the King’ s Regiment (which recruited exclusively from Liverpool at that stage).
During the War the Liverpool Scottish created a total of three battalions (i.e.,
1st/10th, 2nd/10th and 3rd/10th KINGS), and the King’ s Regiment also
created many other new battalions. In 1915 some new battalions had to be
created with only one officer and one soldier with any pre-war experience.
The Army had simply run out of experienced people, due to a combination of
enlargement and casualties.
However, and critically for this study, those new battalions generally received
enough of the ethos of the original regiment, together with a strong sense of
local identity, to allow them to withstand the initial shock of battle and then
develop their own esprit de corps.
The core of the modern system had matured by the 1930s. Regular soldiers
served in one battalion of a ‘
Cardwell pair’ , typically for the whole of their
service. A small number of sergeants undertook instructor’ s tours, typically in
TA battalions of the same regiment. Officers spent all of their regimental duty
with the same regiment and normally with the same battalion. Staff tours were
not common. A CO might command at about the age of 40 after about 20
years’service with only five or six years spent away from his own battalion.
That might be perhaps two years as an SO3, a year at staff college and two
years as an SO2.
In 1939, the Army was enlarged once again; this time for the Second World
War. However, a smaller force was needed. In simple terms the mobilisation
of the Regular Army, the mobilisation and doubling of the TA (to 24 divisions)
and the creation of a small number of specialised formations (including three
armoured and two airborne divisions) was sufficient.
The withdrawal from India in 1947 caused a major change to the system.
About 50 battalions had been required to garrison India. They were no longer
needed. The solution was to disband most second battalions, and deploy
units to remaining colonial garrisons for just two years at a time. Battalions
served in the British Army of the Rhine for 5 years at a time. The Cardwell
system had disappeared and the so-called ‘ single-battalion regiment’
emerged. There were originally about 60 of them.
Further withdrawals from overseas (part of a general process of
decolonisation), the abolition of National (i.e., conscript) Service and the
establishment of the German Bundeswehr prompted a force reduction in 1958
and another in 1968. They were accomplished by: a number of
amalgamations into ‘ large regiments’(which typically took four single-battalion
regiments and produced a new regiment of three); some mergers of single-
battalion regiments; and a very small number of disbandments.
Through this emotionally-charged process the broad outline of the ‘ single
battalion regiment’remained. Even in the new ‘ large’regiments, the degree of
management across or between battalions was small, and unit COs retained
considerable autonomy. An intermediate level of management – the Divisions
of Infantry, typically of 6-8 battalions sharing one depot - was introduced.
These arrangements persisted through the remainder of the Cold War and a
small further reduction in 1992. They were in place throughout almost the
whole of Operation Banner (the military operations in Northern Ireland
between 1969 and 2007). They showed some shortcomings. Firstly, there
was no mechanism to move manpower between units. If a battalion was
under strength (normally due to poor recruiting, but sometimes due to poor
retention; or both) it was brought up to strength for an operational deployment
using ad hoc measures. The reinforcements were dispersed back to their
parent units at the end of that tour.
Secondly, officer recruitment and career development fluctuated, to the extent
that some battalions had repeated difficulty in providing their own COs. As we
shall see, this was a particular problem. Some units had consistently poor
COs. COs had a disproportionate impact on the career management system.
Perhaps surprisingly, poor COs (by these standards) did not necessarily
mean poor units. The effectiveness of units deploying to Northern Ireland for
Operation Banner was surprisingly consistent4.
Thirdly, the process of moving battalions en bloc between garrisons (the
‘Arms Plot’ ) led to units’operational effectiveness dipping, particularly where it
involved re-roling (for example, from light to mechanised infantry). However,
once this was formalised (with a fixed ‘ baulk’period assigned to cover the
process) it does not seem to have affected unit performance when deployed
for any real operation.
Effectiveness: Cohesion and Resilience
It is an apparent anomaly that, throughout history, infantry forces have often
been able to resist the attack of better-protected and more mobile armoured
forces; whether that was armoured horsed cavalry or the tanks of the Second
World War5. The reason for that does not appear to lie primarily in training or
equipment, but rather in the cohesion which infantry can display. That finding
applies as much to the English infantry at the Battle of Hastings as to the
British, Australian, New Zealand, South African and Indian forces at Alam
Halfa. In the case of Hastings the Norman heavy cavalry – knights - could
only prevail when the English infantry’ s cohesion had been broken by Norman
archers.
Operational effectiveness is measured by the performance of the units (and
formations) which an army deploys; not the somewhat abstract conditions of a
regimental system which recruits, trains and sustains those units.
Therefore in considering issues such as cohesion we should look primarily at
its influence on the performance of battalions, their subordinate subunits, and
the battlegroups which are formed around them.
Military cohesion has two aspects – the physical and the moral (or social).
The physical aspect is obvious, although it changes from era to era. In 1066
at Hastings it consisted of standing together, side by side, to the death if need
be. By the Marlburian Wars it had developed to include close-order drill,
serried ranks of bayonets and well-time volleys of musketry. At Alam Halfa it
included the interlock and overlap of antitank guns, machine guns and small
arms fire with an integrated indirect fire plan.
The moral aspect is far less tangible. For some reason, the English did stand
together at Hastings. At Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet
those early line regiments displayed a moral cohesion which was not simply
due to applied discipline. At Alam Halfa those British, Australian, New
Zealand, South African and Indian battalions displayed a similar resolve. It
was underpinned by an ethos and esprit de corps which had developed from
human issues such as generally similar manpower policies.
The important point is not what the finer details of those policies were; but
rather the fact that they underpinned a social cohesion which contributed
markedly to operational effectiveness. Social cohesion is hugely important. It
can be generated in three main ways. The first and most significant is, without
doubt, operational experience; as long as it is not grossly unfavourable.
Soldiers, and units, learn. They learn the hard way, if need be; but they do
learn. They have a strong incentive to do so. The second way is through a
barrier (or threshold) to entry, leading to a perception of elitism. Parachute or
commando selection is a typical modern example. The third is through a form
of unique identity, or ‘
branding’in advertising parlance.
Although operational experience is the most effective, it cannot (by definition)
apply to new units. It also wears off. Barriers to selection cannot apply to
those they exclude, who typically form the majority of an army. It also tends to
attract those for whom belonging to an elite is more important than the task at
hand. The third method – unique identity - is in practice what the British
Regimental System has provided. It is little to do with local recruiting, although
that has been a factor at times. That factor has generally been overplayed
and does not stand up to historical analysis.
Cohesion is closely linked to resilience. There are astonishingly few cases of
British infantry units cracking on the battlefield. Where they have surrendered,
they have generally surrendered en bloc under the direction of their officers.
That is a reflection of resilience under battlefield stress. A less obvious
example is that of the reaction to poor COs. I have seen, and served with,
battalions that have coped well with a poor or unpopular CO (the two are not
the same); but which have recovered within as little as one day with a new
CO.
This discussion of cohesion arises primarily in the academic literature6,7. It
was only captured in an explicit sense in explicit British Army doctrine in
20058. That doctrine was written on behalf of, and signed by, the then Chief of
the General Staff. It is ironic that that individual was one of the main architects
of the 2006 restructuring of the Infantry.
The 2006 Restructuring
The facts of that reorganisation are simple to describe. Three infantry
battalions were lost. That was partly a result of the ending of Operation
Banner, but also to provide manpower for other organisations (such as field
HUMINT, special reconnaissance and similar units). Almost all single-battalion
regiments were combined into larger regiments. They typically consist of three
Regular battalions; but in some case two, and in two cases five. There are
currently about 35 Regular infantry battalions in about 17 regiments. The Foot
Guards regiments all retain individual identities, but the Guards can be viewed
as a single, five-battalion regiment with some idiosyncrasies. The Arms Plot
has been abolished, but some operational redeployment still occurs. That is
driven in part by the requirement for two-year tours of Cyprus for each of two
battalions. In practice this means some ‘ unit moves’ . However, there is no re-
roling and most battalions are, in practice, more-or-less static.
A number of human resource issues which were previously the preserve of
unit COs became the responsibility of Divisions of Infantry. Examples include
the selection and appointment of some captains and all majors at regimental
duty; the selection and appointment of all warrant officers and some
sergeants; and so on. In the first instance, postings will be within an
individual’s parent battalion. However, several issues tend to blur battalion
(and sometimes regimental) affiliations. They include: trying to ensure that all
Company Sergeant Majors undertake an operational tour; balancing
inequalities in the supply of company commanders; and the appointment of
adjutants based on merit rather than cap badge. The Territorial Army is now
used to provide individual reinforcements for operational tours (sometimes in
up to company strength), and so the movement of rank and file between
regular battalions seems to be still quite rare. COs are selected from across
the Infantry (and sometimes elsewhere). They are appointed as nearly as
possible to their own, or related, cap badges.
The reasons for the restructuring fall into two categories: the espoused
reasons and the valid ones. The reasons espoused at the time were largely
those enunciated as changes above. The valid, or underpinning, reasons
appear to largely reflect the individuals responsible for the changes, both in
term of character and motivation. The CGS of the time was the first officer of
the Parachute Regiment to reach that post. His regiment has always operated
a‘ barrier to entry’policy. The benefits of ‘
unique identity’are hard to quantify,
and it is reasonable to suggest that he did not believe that the benefits of
single-battalion regiments were worth the costs they allegedly incurred.
The Commander in Chief (CinC), Land Command was an exceptionally
intelligent artillery officer. The CinC had played a major hand in previous
restructuring plans, such as the Review of Regular Officers’Career Courses,
known as ROCC. It would be reasonable to contend that the 2006
restructuring of the infantry was highly logical but did not attend sufficiently to
the human issues; especially cohesion.
The Adjutant General (AG) was a Scottish infantry officer, highly intelligent
and a man of great integrity. He was also the regimental colonel of his own
regiment and colonel-in-chief of the Scottish Division.
Any reduction based on recruitment and strength risked losing two of the six
Scottish battalions. It is reasonable to believe that AG supported a solution
which: maintained most of those battalions in some form; permitted internal
reinforcement to avoid the need to lose two Scottish battalions; and did not
provoke a large Nationalist backlash in Scotland.
Thus much of the rationale behind the 2006 reorganisation appears to lie
within the personalities and motivations of the CGS, CinC and AG.
In the early 1990s a study considered the cost of the Arms Plot. It concluded
that the costs were trivial. It considered that the cost of moving say, 650
officers, soldiers and families as a unit was little different from moving them as
individuals under a trickle-posting system.
However, under the present system very few infantry soldiers move between
units. Thus the costs of the present system is probably much less than that of
the system it replaced. It seems that the end of the Arms Plot was, not least, a
major cost-savings measure.
On balance, the impact of those changes appears to have been negative.
Improved procedures for career management have been implemented, but
their benefits may be illusory. COs now have more work to do in managing
the annual reporting system (a separate but related development). They have
less personal impact on career management issues. Critically, however, they
do not know their people as well. One former CO, moved across from another
division on appointment, said that he spent his first year in command getting
to know his officers and soldiers as well as he should. He felt that 50% of his
tour of command was wasted in terms of career management. Another said
that the suicide of one of his senior NCOs might have been prevented under
the previous system. He actually knew the individual quite well. Critically,
much of his sergeants’mess did not.
A related issue is whether a career is more important than the unit in which it
is formed. Logically it is not. Career management should exist to ensure that
units are manned with people of the right calibre, with the right experience,
education and training. However, when the process of ensuring that tends to
detract from the operational effectiveness of the battalion as a whole (in this
case by reducing social cohesion) it is counter-productive.
One example is that of soldier management. An infantry soldier has roughly a
one in a hundred chance of becoming an RSM. That has not changed.
Opportunities for all other appointments within a battalion are more numerous,
and there is a relatively wide range of jobs. Changes to the process of
selecting RSMs should not be a major factor. Furthermore, it is highly
arguable whether (for example) making all warrant officers’jobs in a division
open to all candidates actually achieves anything more than a subjective
perception of greater fairness. To change the system to improve the precision
with which about one per cent of soldiers are selected leads one to question
whether or not the change is merited. In practice the former system had many
checks and balances. That meant that, for example, all sufficiently able
warrant officers could normally be found RSM’ s appointments (and hence the
opportunity to gain a commission).
Long-term team formation has been significantly undermined. Not all
members of an infantry battalion are supermen. Knowing individuals over the
very long term allows the members of a unit to accommodate others’
strengths and their weaknesses. Company commanders had usually known
many of their soldiers for much of the previous ten years or so. That is now far
less common. Furthermore, an officer who is fairly sure that he will command
a company together with one of his peers some years hence does not tend to
make an enemy of him, for example.
In practice great rivalries to become CO did not tend to happen, because the
selection of COs depended on performance at staff appointments as much (if
not more) than at regimental duty.
It would be wrong to make accusations of selfishness, but it does appear that
the balance has shifted away from an officer’ s (or warrant officer’
s) loyalty to
his unit and towards himself. In practice an individual’s advancement is now
less intimately connected with his unit and more with his annual appraisals. In
addition, it appears that weak officers tended to leave the old system. They
can now hide within the system by being posted between battalions. Given
other social changes (such as that officers now spend much less time in the
mess), that may be disguised.
Perhaps the biggest loss, however, is that of ‘ brand’ . Small regiments, be they
of one battalion or two, had a fairly strong identity based on their name, which
may or may not have reflected their recruiting area. The given names of the
three regiments from Yorkshire, for example, generally did not. No-one would
suggest, however, that (for example) the Duke of Wellington’ s Regiment did
not have a strong identity. Not least, it was consistently the best English rugby
regiment in the infantry. The new, larger regiments have generally had their
brands diluted, or had trouble in generating one. The Rifles has created a very
strong and obvious brand. However, since it recruits from all over England, it
has been suggested by a senior officer associated with the Rifles that the
brand is not particularly effective. He indicated that it does not support
recruitment or cohesion as well as other some regiments have done.
The quality of individual COs is probably higher than before on average,
because they are genuinely selected from across the Army as a whole, rather
than from what a regiment could produce. However, they are much less likely
to know their people well. It is now unlikely that they will have spent all of their
regimental duty with substantially the same people.
In addition, they are less likely to enjoy their subordinates’loyalty initially,
because they do not know each other as well as they would have done. Thus,
in this respect, operational effectiveness may have been reduced.
The end of the Arms Plot is thought to have overcome difficulties due to unit
moves. However, the ability of a unit to adapt for a different role has been
reduced. An officer with 10 years’regimental duty was likely to have served in
three different roles. He might still.
However, and importantly, that would have been with the same unit; it is now
with three. Battalions were used to unit moves, and generally did them well.
That may be less of a problem now; since re-roling will, in principle, not occur.
Probably the main impact, however, is a second-order one. Previously an
officer or soldier used to think of his battalion as his home, wherever that may
be. He now tends to think of a given garrison as his home. For example, one
English battalion is now based just inside the Welsh border in Chepstow. It is
now receiving some recruits who chose to join it because they come from that
part of Wales. In the past they would never have though of joining anything
other than a named Welsh battalion, of which there were (and still are) two.
Increasingly, soldiers may think of their unit less as something special and
more as the place where they work.
The reorganisation has brought about some negative effects which are
transient and should be ignored. For example, two officers posted away from
Duke of Wellington’ s Regiment The Rifles The British Army Review Number
149 75 what had been their ‘ own’battalion were shocked to find that they did
not know a single field officer currently serving with it. That reflects a divisional
policy to post officers away in the short term, in order to break up old battalion
identities and help form new regimental ones. That is understandable. The
effect is transient.
If it is done for long enough, everybody will know at least somebody.
The current operational situation has had positive effects, which may also be
transient. One regiment of two battalions was formed from three single-
battalion regiments. Manpower was deliberately mixed up, and both battalions
served in Iraq shortly afterwards. One lost eight soldiers killed and 13
wounded.
It returned as a highly effective and particularly cohesive unit. The other
battalion had a similar experience. As a result the Regiment currently has two
strongly cohesive battalions.
The problem, however, is not whether or not battalions can gain cohesion
through operational experience. They have done so for centuries. Cohorts of
the Roman Army did. The problem is whether units which do not have some
form of barrier to selection can generate and sustain an appropriate level of
cohesion in the long periods – sometimes several decades – between major
operational deployments.
The evidence to date is that their ability to do so has been reduced. Cohesive
units can show considerable resilience.
It is less obvious whether they can withstand changes to the human resource
policies which enable them to generate their cohesion.
Overview and Conclusions Quaint military tradition is interesting but, of itself,
unimportant. The operational effectiveness which units display is far more
important. The British Army developed, almost by accident, a series of
practices (loosely called the Regimental System) which allowed its infantry
battalions to display great social cohesion, and hence considerable
operational effectiveness. In particular, they have typically showed great
resilience.
Such characteristics are often the second- or third-order effects of manpower
policies, and therefore not obvious. The Arms Plot, for example, was originally
a way of manning colonial garrisons. It became the mechanism which
generated very long service with a given unit. It therefore generated very long-
term team formation, which was a core element of the social cohesion of
British infantry battalions.
It seems that some of the senior echelons of the British Army in 2005 did not
fully appreciate the importance of social cohesion and the processes which
generate it. If they did (as in the case of the then AG) they were faced with
pragmatic short-term challenges which, at the time, were more significant.
Unfortunately second- and third-order human effects are the stuff of
unintended consequences. They are, almost by definition, not predicted in
advance. The key deduction is the need to move very conservatively with
regards to human resource management policies.
By that measure, the 2006 restructuring was a series of fairly radical changes.
The British Army has probably lost something important. It may have lost the
mechanism which generated and sustained the moral cohesion of its line
infantry. The consequences could be disastrous. Its current operational
deployments will probably disguise that, for perhaps a decade or so (that is,
for several years after those deployments come to an end, or become less
demanding). Looking elsewhere, the history of the US Task Force Smith in
Korea in 1950 suggests that elements of a successful army which does not
have appropriate mechanisms for generating moral cohesion can fall apart
only five years after a major war. A year after Task Force Smith, the Glosters9
achieved lasting fame on the Imjin River: a clear case of moral cohesion.
The changes introduced with the 2006 restructuring will probably not have
such drastic effects. If such negative effects occur within the service of one
generation of officers (perhaps 35 years or so), they may be reversible. If not,
how will the Army know what it has lost? How will it regain it? Will it regain it?
1. This is an edited version of a paper which was presented at the Chief of
Army’ s military history conference, Canberra, Australia in 2009. It was
published as ‘ The Regimental System in the British Army’ , in Raise, Train and
Sustain. Delivering Land Combat Power.

Proceedings of the Australian Chief of Army History Conference 2009. Peter

Dennis and Jeffrey Grey eds. Canberra: Australian Military History
Publications, 2009, pp244-255. The author and editor are grateful to the
Australian Military History Unit for their kind permission to reprint the paper
here.

2. See, for example, Jim Storr, The Human Face of War (London: Continuum, 2009).
3. The author wishes to thank the participants for their contribution to this research.
They know who they are!
4. Operation Banner. An Analysis of Military Operations in Northern Ireland. Army
Code 71842. Passim.
5. Archer Jones, The Art of War in the Western World (London: Harrap, 1988). P40
and passim.
6. For example, J F Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the
Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell
Press, 1997). Passim.
7. Archer Jones, passim.
8. Army Doctrine Publication ‘
Land Operations’
, Army Code 71819, 2005. Paras
0215-8.
9. 1st Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment (28th and 61st Foot).  The
Gloucestershire Regiment