Frontier Force Regiment - Origins

Origins

The Frontier Force Regiment came into being in 1957 with the amalgamation of the Frontier Force Regiment, the Frontier Force Rifles and the Pathan Regiment, all of which had their origins in the British Indian Army. During the 1840s, after the first and second Anglo-Sikh Wars, Colonel Sir Henry Lawrence, the Honourable East India Company's agent to the Lahore Durbar (brother of the later Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab Sir John Lawrence, 1st Baron Lawrence) sanctioned the raising of the Corps of Guides and a number of infantry regiments by incorporating veterans from the disbanded Sikh Khalsa army. During the early 1850s some of Lawrence's Sikh regiments were designated the "Punjab Irregular Force", giving rise to the "Piffer" nickname which the Regiment carries to the present day, and through a series of reorganisations that culminated in 1922, these units would eventually become the 12th Frontier Force Regiment and 13th Frontier Force Rifles. The use of the pre-fixing regimental numbers was discontinued in 1945, the two regiments becoming the Frontier Force Regiment and the Frontier Force Rifles, and both regiments were transferred to Pakistan by the United Kingdom in 1947, on the granting of independence to British India.

The Pathan Regiment was raised after partition from the 4th Battalion of the Frontier Force Regiment and the 4th and 15th Battalions of the Frontier Force Rifles. Initially the regimental depot was at Dera Ismail Khan but it relocated to Kohat in 1949 and was later merged into the Frontier Force Regiment with its regimental depot at Abbottabad. Fifteen of the modern Frontier Force Regiment's 52 battalions trace their origins back to British Indian Army units, as tabulated below.