Assam Valley Light Horse
The Assam Valley Light Horse were a volunteer corps and auxiliary regiment based in Assam.
Chronology
- 1891 raised as the Assam Valley Mounted Rifles on 6th November when the Lakhimpur Mounted Rifles, Sibsagar Mounted Rifles, Darrang Mounted Rifles, Nowgong Mounted Rifles and Gauhati Rifles amalgamated[1]
- 1896 renamed Assam Valley Light Horse on 25th September[2]
- 1906 absorbed the Shillong Volunteer Rifles on 1st May[1]
Note that the regiment called the Assam Rifles is a different regiment, which originally consisted of Assam Military Police battalions.
Details
- Motto - "Semper Paratus"
In 1901:[2]
- Uniform - Khaki drill with steel shoulder chains
- Mess uniform - Blue with white facings
- Headquarters - Dibrugarh
Detachments at:
- Doom Dooma
- Panitola
- Margherita
- Moran
- Sonari
- Sibsagar
- Jorhat
- Panbarrz
- Numalighur
- North Lakhimpur
- Salonah
- Gauhati
- Tezpur
- Bishnath
- Mangaldai
By 1940:[1]
- Uniform - Blue
- Facings - White
- Badge - A.V.L.H.
Service
A detachment consisting of one officer and 12 men operating a maxim gun were taken on the 1911-1912 expedition against the Abors.[3][4] The men were nicknamed Lumsden's Lambs.[5]
British Library holdings
- Recollections of a varied life Mss Eur Photo Eur 225 copy of memoir by Maj Ronald Herbert Cronin (b 1897), including details of his career with the Assam Frontier Tea Company in Assam and Ranchi 1922-1941 and 1946-1958, and of his service with the Assam Valley Light Horse from 1922, and the Assam Regiment during the Second World War.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Jackson, Major Donovan India's Army (1940)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Indian Army List 1st Sept 1901
- ↑ In Abor Jungles of North East India, Angus Hamilton (1912) p123. The book lists those men involved.
- ↑ *History of Upper Assam, Upper Burmah and North-Eastern Frontier, Leslie Waterfield Shakespear (1914) p121
- ↑ Hamilton, p126
External Links
- Assam Valley Light Horse from Koi-hai.com including many photos from various era.
- Photograph AVLH 1930’s from Lokantra.com
- Col Sir Charles Thorp Jessop CIE, VD from “Ancestors of David Robarts”. A tea planter in Assam who joined the Sibsagar Mounted Rifles in 1886 and transferred to the Assam Valley Mounted Rifles in which he served for more than 20 years; the last ten years as Commandant.
Historical books online
- The history of Lumsden's Horse; a complete record of the corps from its formation to its disbandment by Henry H. S Pearse, p4 advises that Lt Col Dugald Mactavish Lumsden, commander of Lumsden's Horse in South Africa in 1900, was appointed Captain in the Durrung Mounted Rifles on its 1887 formation and later became commandant of the Assam Valley Light Horse until 1893.