3-043-776 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Autumn Campaign: arrival of the Oxford University Volunteers in the Southern Camp, 1872. British Army manoeuvres. 'About an hour after the arrival of the local battalion another train brought down the eight companies forming the provisional battalion of volunteers commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Sackville West, late of the Grenadier Guards, and now of the Oxford University Corps...The battalion is thus composed Inns of Court, two companies; Oxford University, Cambridge University, Oxford City, Lyndhurst (Hampshire), Artists, and London Scottish, one company each - that is to say, eight companies of fifty men, making, with the officers, &c., something over 450 in all. Containing, as the battalion does, so many men of undoubted social position, all about to live, for the time, a soldier's life on soldier's fare, its arrival in camp excited no small sensation among the regulars...the feeling of the men showed itself in the lanes of redcoats which were formed in an instant by soldiers swarming out of all the regimental camps to see the volunteers march in, and by their friendly comments and loud and hearty cheering as the different companies went by'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.