History
56 (Olpherts) Headquarters Battery RA has its origins in India as 5 Company, 3 Battalion, The Bengal Artillery, which was formed on 2 June 1786. The Indian mutiny of 1857 played a significant part in Battery history. During the first relief of Lucknow, Captain William Olpherts or "Hellfire Jack" as he was known, won the Victoria Cross for conspicuous gallantry; he charged the enemy on horseback and captured two rebel guns that were pouring fire onto the flanks of the advancing forces. To commemorate this distinction, on 19 October 1966, the honour title "Olpherts" was awarded to 56 Battery RA.
Read more about this topic: 56 (Olpherts) Battery Royal Artillery
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)