A Melange of Military Motto's Trivia Quiz

Answer: Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense

'Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense' or 'Shamed be he who thinks evil of it' is a phrase taken from Middle French and has appeared on the royal coat of arms and the regalia of the Most Noble Order of the Garter since the 14th century. On the occasion of its amalgamation with the Royal Hampshire Regiment in 1992, the Queens Regiment was renamed the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment.

The Coldstream Guards, the oldest regiment in the regular army, were formed at Coldstream in Scotland in 1650. Although they are the older regiment, the Coldstream Guards are second in precedence to the Grenadier Guards as that regiment has been in service to the crown for a longer period.

This motto is also used by some units of the armies of the Commonwealth, the Royal Regiment of Canada and the Royal Australian Engineers being two examples.

Answer: Scotland

'No-one provokes me with impunity!' And many enemies have had cause to rue the day that they did so. This Latin motto appears on the royal coat of arms for Scotland and is the motto of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Scotland's senior order of chivalry. Until 2006 it was also the motto of the Royal Highland Regiment, famous across the world as the 'Black Watch', the Royal Highland Fusiliers and the Royal Scots, also known as 'Pontius Pilate's Bodyguard' as well as the cavalry regiment, The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, the 'Scots Greys'.

The motto appears on the current cap badge of the Royal Regiment of Scotland of which the Black Watch, the RHF and the RS are now constituent battalions. It is also used by the Royal Company of Archers who are a private archery club founded in 1676, based in the city of Edinburgh and who provide the sovereign's bodyguard whilst they are in Scotland.

Answer: The Parachute Regiment

The three battalions of the Parachute Regiment provide the airborne element of the British armed forces and are considered to be an elite unit. Their maroon berets are recognised the world over. The Soviets were the first to employ airborne soldiers as far back as the mid-1930s, and these were closely followed by the German 'Fallschirmjager'.

The British airborne forces were formed in 1940 from a unit of the newly constituted British Commandos. There have been no full scale airborne deployments into a combat zone by the Parachute Regiment since the Suez Crisis during 1956.

In the decades since the end of WWII the regiment has seen service in theatres such as the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Answer: Semper Fidelis

'Semper Fidelis'; 'Always Faithful' is the motto of the City of Exeter, the county town of Devon in the south west of England. The motto appeared above the representation of Exeter castle on the regimental cap badge from their formation in Germany in 1958 until its eventual disappearance into 'The Rifles' in 2007. Also featured on their cap badge were two honours from the Dorsetshire Regiment, the first 'Primus in Indis' or 'First in India' and, a battle honour unique in the British army, 'Marabout' after an action that took place in Egypt in 1801.

Answer: The Intelligence Corps

John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough once said that 'no war can be conducted successfully without early and good intelligence', but prior to the Boer War, the British Army had a cavalier attitude to intelligence gathering. At the outset of the Boer War the need for interpreters and scouts had arisen and by 1900 the strength of British military intelligence numbered some 2,450 officers and men.

In 1909 an organisation known as MI5 was formed which was followed in 1912 by MI6, two organisations that will be familiar to many here.

At the outbreak of WW1 in 1914 the intelligence services consisted primarily of a number of army officers, officers of the Metropolitan Police and civilian staff but, at the end of the war, this organisation was disbanded.

It was on the 15th of July 1940 that the current 'Intelligence Corps' was constituted by King George VI. The Corps played a pivotal role in the defeat of Nazi Germany through its operations at Bletchley Park, its support of the LRDG, the 'Long Range Desert Group' and its successor, the SAS.

The corps actively provided espionage and counter-espionage services during the period of the Cold War and, in recent years, has provided the same in theatres such as Palestine, Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and many others.

Answer: The Kings Own Scottish Borderers

The Kings Own Scottish Borderers were raised in Edinburgh in 1689 to defend the city from the advancing Jacobite army and it is for this reason that the regiment carried the mottoes of the City of Edinburgh, 'Nisi Dominus Frustra', 'Without the Lord everything is in vain' and 'In Veritate Religionis Confido', 'I put my trust in the truth of religion'.

The regiment was raised in a period of less than two hours with over eight hundred men volunteering to defend their city. As they were a lowland regiment, the Kings Own Scottish Borderers were not kilted but wore trews of Clan Leslie tartan.

The principal battle honour carried on their colours was 'Minden' which took place on the 1st of August 1759. It was during this battle that British soldiers wore a flower on their uniforms as a means of identification. To this day the successors of the KOSB and the four other regiments present that day wear a rose in their caps as a celebration of 'Minden Day'.

In 2006, as part of the infantry restructuring programme, the regiment was amalgamated with the 1st Battalion the Royal Scots to form the 1st (Royal Scots Borderers) Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

Answer: Ich Dien

Legend has it that after the battle of Crécy in August 1346, Edward 'Black' Prince of Wales took from the body of his respected opponent, the defeated King John I of Bohemia, the king's personal arms which consisted of three feathers and the motto 'Ich Dien'.

Although a tale that has since been discredited it certainly makes for a great story. It is more realistic to presume that the emblem was adopted from the arms of his mother, Phillipa of Hainault, Queen to his father, King Edward III. Another story, appropriately enough, tells that the welsh phrase 'Eych Dyn', a homophone of 'Ich Dien' and which means 'Your Man' would have made the Black Prince very popular amongst his Welsh soldiers who formed the greater part of the troops under his command.

The symbol of the three feathers is used by Surrey County Cricket Club whose ground, The Oval, stands on land owned by the Prince of Wales, although the club does not use the motto itself.

Answer: False

The Royal Regiment of Artillery was founded in 1716 and had their headquarters at Woolwich, London for over three hundred years before moving to newer headquarters at Larkhill in Wiltshire on the edge of Salisbury Plain, a major training area. The Royal Artillery provides the British army with its heavy weapons, a capability which it achieves using large calibre guns and advanced missile and rocket systems.

As in the case of the Royal Engineers, regiments of artillery will be found in every garrison where British soldiers are stationed.

It is the King's Troop of the Royal Horse Artillery that provide the gun salutes at state ceremonial events and it is the RHA that take precedence over the Household Cavalry at any parade at which their guns are present.

Answer: Ubique

Their motto 'Ubique' is most apt when you consider the range of roles that the 'Sappers', as they are known, are responsible for. Like the Royal Artillery, which also use the word 'Ubique' as a second motto, wherever there are soldiers you will find the Royal Engineers; they certainly are 'everywhere'! The range of tasks that they carry out is vast and these include such diverse battlefield roles as bridge building and maintenance, EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) tasks, and construction and post-conflict and morale roles such as humanitarian aid, water and electricity supply services and field postal services.

Answer: True

The Queen's Own Highlanders came into existence in 1961 with the amalgamation of two fine highland regiments, the Queens Own Cameron Highlanders and the Seaforth Highlanders. The regiment was easily identifiable from all other Scottish infantry regiments as their glengarries were a uniform plain black without the dicing common to all other Scottish units.

A blue feather hackle was also worn behind the cap badge, affectionately known as 'Hector'. The regimental motto 'Cuidich 'n Righ', the only Scots Gaelic motto in the British Army, was that of the Seaforth Highlanders whose cap badge of a stags head was also adopted for the new regiment.

The 'Queens Own' part of the regimental name came over from the Cameron Highlanders. It was at the tactical withdrawal to Dunkirk in 1940 that members of the Cameron Highlanders became the last soldiers ever to fight in the kilt. On the 17th of September 1994 under the government's 'Options for Change' programme, the Queens Own Highlanders were amalgamated with the 1st Battalion the Gordon Highlanders to become 'The Highlanders' (Seaforth, Gordons and Camerons). On the 28th of March 2006 the regiment became one of the battalions that composed the new Royal Regiment of Scotland, as 4 SCOTS, and another chapter in the glorious history of the Scottish soldier closed forever.