THE ROYAL GREEN JACKETS
A BRIEF HISTORY

The Formation and Origins of the Regiment
On 1^st January 1966 the Royal Green Jackets was formed as a single large regiment.  Its creation followed logically from the composition of The Green Jackets Brigade in 1958, which grouped together three former single-battalion infantry regiments: The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (43^rd & 52^nd), The Kings Royal Rifle Corps and the Rifle Brigade. 
It was no accident that these particular regiments, each having such a distinguished record in the past, should have progressively, voluntarily and successfully come together, avoiding the stresses which often accompany amalgamations, because they shared a large measure of their history and their traditions.  They, and The Royal Green Jackets as their heir, lay claim to being the innovators who developed much of the new thinking in the British infantry in the fields of tactics, training, equipment and man-management from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. 

The leadership of such distinguished officers as Henri Bouquet, Francis de Rottenburg, Coote Manningham and Sir John Moore generated a succession of advance ideas later to be adopted as ideals by the rest of the Army: open-order tactics and mobility in place of rigid drills and ponderous movement, camouflage and concealment in place of serried ranks and red coats, individual marksmanship in place of the massed musket fire, and intelligence and self-reliance in place of blind obedience instilled by the fear of brutal punishment.  The following pages will trace these themes as they record the stories of four regiments whose fortunes were often closely linked to the point where they fuse together in The Royal Green Jackets of today.