page_title: Rifleman
section_title: United Kingdom
hierarchical_section_title: Rifleman / Rifleman in different countries / United Kingdom
caption_attribution_description: English: President of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy inspects an honour guard of the Bermuda Rifles at Kindley Air Force Base on his arrival in the British Colony of Bermuda on the 21st of December, 1961, to attend meetings with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Harold Macmillan. Escorting the President is the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Bermuda, Major-General Sir Julian Alvery Gascoigne, and an officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery.
context_page_description: A rifleman is an infantry soldier armed with a rifled long gun. Although the rifleman role had its origin with 16th century hand cannoneers and 17th century musketeers, the term originated in the 18th century with the introduction of the rifled musket. By the mid-19th century, entire regiments of riflemen were formed and became the mainstay of all standard infantry, and rifleman became a generic term for any common infantryman.
context_section_description: From their inception British Rifle Regiments were distinguished by a dark green dress with blackened buttons, black leather equipment, and sombre facing colours designed for concealment. This has been retained to the present day for those British units that still carry on the traditions of the riflemen. Their most famous weapon was the Baker rifle (officially known as the Pattern 1800 Infantry Rifle), which in the hands of the elite 95th regiment and the light companies of the 60th regiment and the Kings German Legion gained fame in the Peninsular War against Napoleonic France.
  60th rifles/King's Royal Rifle Corps
  95th Rifles/The Rifle Brigade
  Royal Ulster Rifles
  Royal Green Jackets
  The Rifles
  Royal Gurkha Rifles
  Cameronians (Scottish Rifles)
  During the Siege of Delhi the 8th (Sirmoor) Local Battalion along with the 60th Rifles defended Hindu Rao's House during which a strong bond developed. After the rebellion, the 60th Rifles pressed for the Sirmoor Battalion to become a rifle regiment. This honour was granted to them the following year (1858) when the Battalion was renamed the Sirmoor Rifle Regiment. Later all British Army Gurkha regiments were designated rifle regiments a nomenclature maintained to this day with the Royal Gurkha Rifles.
  The rank of Rifleman instead of Private was officially introduced in 1923.
  The British military had, from the union of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 until the end of the Napoleonic Wars, included a standing army (the "Regular Army") and the Board of Ordnance, a more ancient part-time, conscripted Militia, the part-time Yeomanry cavalry, and various short-lived volunteer and fencible units formed for the duration of emergencies. In the 1850s, the Militia was re-organised into a voluntarily-recruited force that, like the army, enlisted recruits for fixed terms of service.
  Concerns over the vulnerability of Britain to attack by a continental power, especially with much of the Regular Army garrisoning the Empire, also led to the creation of a permanent Volunteer Force. Although this would include various types of units, the majority were company-sized Volunteer Rifle Corps, dressed in rifle-green or grey uniforms and trained as skirmishers to support the line infantry of the regular army or to act independently to harry enemy forces.
  Successive reforms saw the smaller corps grouped into battalions with neighbouring corps, then most lost their identities when they became volunteer battalions of new county regiments 1881. These regiments typically contained two regular battalions, which had previously been separate single battalion regiments, as the first and second battalions, sharing a depot, with militia and volunteer units in the same county becoming additionally numbered battalions. As the majority of these new regiments were formed from regular line infantry and most of the volunteer rifle corps linked with them would lose their identity as rifle units. Examples included the Robin Hood Rifles, which was to become the 7th (Robin Hood) Battalion, Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment). The rifles identity was not always lost despite becoming part of a line infantry regiment.
  The 5th Lancashire Rifle Volunteer Corps, became part of the 2nd Administrative Battalion Lancashire Rifle Volunteers, which became the 5th (Liverpool Rifle Brigade) Rifle Volunteer Corps, the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the King's Regiment (Liverpool), and then the 6th Battalion (Rifles) King's Regiment (Liverpool). In 1936, the battalion was retrained to operate searchlights and redesignated the 38th (The King's Regiment) Anti-Aircraft Battalion, Royal Engineers (Territorial Army), and in 1940 it was renamed the 38th (The Kings Regiment) Searchlight Regiment, Royal Artillery (Territorial Army). Despite the change of parent corps, the battalion wore 'Liverpool Rifles' shoulder titles with red lettering on a Rifle green backgrounds.
  Other volunteer rifle corps retained their independence and their identities through the various re
caption: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, escorted by a Bermuda Militia Artillery officer in Royal Artillery blue No. 1 Dress, inspects green-uniformed riflemen of the Bermuda Rifles in 1961
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