page_title: Royal Horse Guards
section_title: Mobilisation
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Horse Guards / Twentieth century warfare / First World War / Mobilisation
caption_attribution_description: English: A British cavalryman eating beside his horse in Belgium on 13 October 1914.
context_page_description: The Royal Regiment of Horse Guards was a cavalry regiment of the British Army, part of the Household Cavalry.
  Raised in August 1650 at Newcastle upon Tyne and County Durham by Sir Arthur Haselrigge on the orders of Oliver Cromwell as a Regiment of Horse, the regiment became the Earl of Oxford's Regiment in 1660 upon the Restoration of King Charles II. As, uniquely, the regiment's coat was blue in colour at the time, it was nicknamed "the Oxford Blues", from which was derived the nickname the "Blues." In 1750 the regiment became the Royal Horse Guards Blue and eventually, in 1877, the Royal Horse Guards.
  The regiment served in the French Revolutionary Wars and in the Peninsular War. Two squadrons fought, with distinction, in the Household Brigade at the Battle of Waterloo. In 1918, the regiment served as the 3rd Battalion, Guards Machine Gun Regiment. During the Second World War the regiment was part of the Household Cavalry Composite Regiment. The Royal Horse Guards was amalgamated with the Royal Dragoons to form the Blues and Royals in 1969.
context_section_description: When war broke out the regiment was at Combermere Barracks, Windsor (renamed after Clewer was demolished and rebuilt). One squadron came under the order of the Composite Household regiment. The regiment landed at Zeebrugge as part of the 7th Cavalry Brigade in the 3rd Cavalry Division in October 1914 for service on the Western Front.
  On 30 October the Blues were operating in the zone around the village of Zanvoorde when the Germans attacked.  On 20 November the Cavalry Corps had joined up with Edmund Allenby's Division in the Ypres Salient, a front line that went east of Zonnebeke, around Polygon Wood, over the Menin Road (the road from Ypres to Menin) and then west of Zanvoorde towards Wytchaete and Messines.  From whence the Composite regiment (Life Guards 1 and 2 ) resisted an offensive on 31 October. A French cavalry brigade was sent east of Hooge as a dismounted detachment in support of 7th Cavalry Brigade at 5 pm. The action had begun on 25 October when the Blues staging a daring operation covered the retreat of 20th Infantry brigade, on horseback.  They galloped out to draw German shell fire.  On 21 November the Royal Horse Guards were moved to the 8th Cavalry Brigade, which had only been formed the previous day. On 26 December 1914, Sir Douglas Haig, a cavalry officer, took command of the 1st Army.
  In 1916 the Welshman, Colwyn Philipps, a captain of the Blues, was killed in action.  Shortly afterwards his poetry was released by Rupert Brookes.  His simple prosody such as "An Outsider" and "A friend" and "Sesame and Lilies", said to be in the style of Robert Browning, were symbolic of an innocence of youth on horseback cut down in his prime, lost to his father.
caption: British cavalryman in Belgium, 13 October 1914
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