It was probably one of Kipling's tales of the British Army.

Category: British Army personnel of World War I

Hastings, a former British Army officer, first meets Poirot during Poirot's years as a police officer in Belgium and almost immediately after they both arrive in England.

* 1642 – Irish Confederate Wars: A Confederate Irish militia is routed in the Battle of Kilrush when it attempts to halt the progress of the British Army.

* 1777 – American Revolutionary War: British forces abandon the Siege of Fort Stanwix after hearing rumors of Continental Army reinforcements.

* 1798 – Wolfe Tone's United Irish and French forces clash with the British Army in the Battle of Castlebar, part of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, resulting in the creation of the French puppet Republic of Connaught.

* 1979 – A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb kills British World War II admiral Louis Mountbatten and three others while they are boating on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland.

Shortly after, 18 British Army soldiers are killed in an ambush near Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland ( see Warrenpoint ambush ).

* 1908 – The Territorial Force ( renamed Territorial Army in 1920 ) is formed as a volunteer reserve component of the British Army.

Julius's work with the ICS brought the family to British India, where his grandfather had been a general in the Bengal Army.

In Britain this was one of a number of events that constituted the Annus Mirabilis of 1759 and is celebrated as Minden Day by certain British Army regiments.

Although Collins used it as a catharsis for her opposition to the Vietnam War, two years after her rendition, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, senior Scottish regiment of the British Army, recorded an instrumental version featuring a bagpipe soloist accompanied by a pipe and drum band.

* 1812 – War of 1812: American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit without a fight to the British Army.

* 1943 – World War II: The U. S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton arrives in Messina, Italy, followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, thus completing the Allied conquest of Sicily.

* 1537 – The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, is formed.

* 1914 – World War I: the Battle of Mons ; the British Army begins withdrawal.

Category: British Army personnel of World War I

* 1755 – Under the orders of Charles Lawrence, the British Army begins to forcibly deport the Acadians from Nova Scotia to the Thirteen Colonies.

* 1777 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Ridgefield: A British invasion force engages and defeats Continental Army regulars and militia irregulars at Ridgefield, Connecticut.

The ranks of the Australian Army are based on the ranks of the British Army, and carry mostly the same actual insignia.

Similarly desperate losses were suffered elsewhere on the front, in a disastrous day for the British Army ( approximately 19, 000 British soldiers were killed in a single day ).

After the war he became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine ( BAOR ) in Germany and then Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

After the First World War Montgomery commanded the 17th Battalion the Royal Fusiliers, a battalion in the British Army of the Rhine, before reverting to his substantive rank of captain ( brevet major ) in November 1919.

This came about as a result of the rapid decline in the size of the British garrison from the mid-3rd century onwards ( thus freeing up more goods for export ), and because of ‘ Germanic ’ incursions across the Rhine, which appear to have reduced rural settlement and agricultural output in northern Gaul.

In 1925, Wiesbaden became the headquarters of the British Rhine Army until the withdrawal of occupying forces from the Rhineland in 1930.

Although archeological evidence of this grain has been found in Roman contexts along the Rhine, Danube, and in the British Isles, Pliny the Elder was dismissive of rye, writing that it " is a very poor food and only serves to avert starvation " and spelt is mixed into it " to mitigate its bitter taste, and even then is most unpleasant to the stomach " ( N. H. 18. 40 ).

A fleet of 800 river boats built for the Rhine, crossed to the British east coast and carried back enough corn to raise the famine.

In 1807 Prussian East Frisia and Jever were added to the kingdom but in 1809, after a British invasion, Holland had to give over all territories south of the river Rhine to France.

Five hours after the initial landing, feeling that the British were tied down in Arnhem, the Reconnaissance Battalion of the 9th SS Panzer Division was able to cross the Arnhem bridge and drive to Nijmegen and the bridge over the Waal branch of the Rhine.

In the end, after strong German counterattacks, the overall plan failed: the British 1st Airborne Division was all but destroyed at Arnhem, and the final Rhine bridge remained in German hands.

Conducted as a part of Operation Plunder, the operation took place on 24 March 1945 in aid of an attempt by the British 21st Army Group to cross the Rhine River.

* Saunders, Tim, Operation Plunder – The British & Canadian Rhine Crossing, Pen & Sword Military, 2006

The British ambassador reported in December 1918 on Clemenceau's views on the future of the Rhineland: " He said that the Rhine was a natural boundary of Gaul and Germany and that it ought to be made the German boundary now, the territory between the Rhine and the French frontier being made into an Independent State whose neutrality should be guaranteed by the great powers ".

The town is also the location of the former Northampton Barracks, which housed units of the British Army of the Rhine until 1993 ( postcode: BFPO 33 ).

Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery favoured a single thrust north over the branches of the Lower Rhine river, allowing the British 2nd Army to bypass the German Siegfried Line and attack the Ruhr.

Montgomery's plan involved dropping the U. S. 101st Airborne Division to capture key bridges around Eindhoven, the 82nd Airborne Division to secure key crossings around Nijmegen, and the British 1st Airborne Division, with the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade attached, to capture three bridges across the Rhine at Arnhem.

The British Second Army, led by XXX Corps would advance up the " Airborne corridor ", securing the Airborne Division's positions and crossing the Rhine within two days.

The arrival of the Poles relieved the pressure on the British as the Germans were forced to send more forces south of the Rhine.

The British had witnessed the Polish drop but were unable to make contact by radio so a swimmer was sent south of the Rhine.

Bittricht ordered that the attacks were stepped up and the British bridgehead north of the Rhine destroyed and at 09: 00 the major attacks began with the various Kampfgruppes of 9th SS attacking from the east and Kampfgruppe von Tettaus units from the west.

Although a disaster for the British 1st Airborne Division, their fight north of the Rhine is considered an example of courage and endurance and one of the greatest feats of arms in the Second World War.

With the failure of the British attempt to force a crossing of the Rhine at Arnhem ( Operation Market Garden ) in late September, the chance of invading Germany before the winter set in was lost, and Rundstedt was given time to consolidate his position.

From the end of World War I until 1926 Cologne was occupied by the British Army of the Rhine under the terms of the armistice and the subsequent Versailles Peace Treaty.

I Corps of the British Army of the Rhine was redesignated the Headquarters Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps in 1994.