The Seventieth Regiment 1867 - 1881
and 2^nd Battalion the East Surrey Regiment (70^th Foot), 1881 - 1945

The Seventieth returned from active service in New Zealand in 1866. These Colours were presented to the Seventieth at Aldershot by Lady Scarlett, wife of the GOC, Sir James Scarlett of Balaclava Heavy Brigade fame, in August 1867. They were carried for seventy-eight years, at one time being among the oldest in the British Army. They seem to have anticipated the Queen’s regulation of 1868 (or else they were later altered), which ordered the final reduction in size of Colours to three feet nine inches horizontally by three feet vertically. Like its predecessors, the Regimental Colour bore the red cross of St George on a black field. A rather large LXX, set on a piece of red cloth on the faded central red cross, would appear to be a later renovation on the Queen’s Colour.

The Battle Honours borne on the Regimental Colour of the 70^th at the time of the formation of The East Surrey Regiment were:

After a successful tour of duty in Ireland, the 70^th served in India from 1872 to 1884, during which period the reorganisation of Line Infantry, on a territorial basis, took place. As a result the 70^th became the 2^nd Surreys. Active service in the Second Afghan War of 1878-1879, which was the last time the Colours were carried in action, and against the Mahdi in Suakin in 1885 was followed by a short tour in Malta 1893-1895. The Colours accompanied the Battalion to South Africa where Spion Kop and Colenso may be mentioned among the many actions in which the battalion was involved, with a loss of 290 killed and wounded.

In these years, the 2^nd Surreys added the following Battle Honours to the Colours:

The Colours remained in England throughout the Great War, and because of their age, were naturally held in great esteem.

When the 2^nd Battalion went to serve in the Far East in 1938, the Colours went with them, and as the Japanese threatened Singapore, they were placed with the silver in the vaults of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. As the enemy came nearer it was suggested that the Colours should be sent home, but the Commanding Officer ordered they should remain and take their chance with the battalion. During the occupation, the Japanese evidently had examined these, by now, much faded flags and had thrown them on the floor of the bank vault, where they were found in August 1945. Colonel FAH Magee, who had carried the Regimental Colour as a subaltern at the trooping ceremony in Jersey in 1925, recalled the events of 1945:

Figure 54

Figure 55

Having been duly returned, they were marched onto parade, furled, at West Chiltington Camp, near Pulborough, on 30^th November 1945, by a Colour Party made up of recently repatriated members of the original 2^nd Battalion (including Colonel Magee) which had lost over 300 men during the fighting in the Malayan campaign and later as prisoners of war. The Colours were then trooped in slow time through the new, re-constituted battalion, and being re-furled after the General Salute were marched to the rear of the parade to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. This famous old pair of Colours are now beautifully framed and exhibited at Clandon Park.