Battalion Company

Presently, a Battalion Company of the 35th Regiment has not been recreated, but might be at some point in the future to support the 35th Grenadiers.

Every British regiment was initially composed of 8 battalion companies (sometimes called "Hatt Companies" because they wore cocked hats, sometimes called "Centre Companies" because they paraded in the center of the regiment) and two flank companies which drew the elite soldiers.  

As the war progressed, the regiments were given two additional battalion companies, one of which stayed in Britain as a depot company to send new recruits to America.  The battalion companies were named according to the seniority of their company commanders.  In 1776, they were the following:

Every new recruit was put into a battalion company, the standard troop-of-the-line.  They wore a brick red coat and orange facings in the case of the 35th.  Each man had a black cocked hat and we continue the tradition of wearing the white Roussillon Plume.  All the soldier's leatherwork was white and he was armed primarily with the Long Land Pattern Musket which carried a triangular socket bayonet.  Infantry ceased to carry swords by this time, those only carried by grenadiers (and even they abandoned them by the end of the war).  The recreated 35th Regiment depicts the regiment as it was in 1776 during the New York and New Jersey campaigns, so the battalion company soldier wore a full length uniform as per the Royal Warrant of 1768.  All smallclothes were white wool and half-gaiters could be worn during warmer days.

The soldier was paid, officially, eight pence a day, with stoppages taken out for his clothing, food, and the Royal Hospital at Chelsea.  As a result, he was left with tuppence a day to live off of, making the redcoat soldiers very poor indeed.  However, contrary to popular belief, the common soldier was not a criminal or a wastrel who had been forced into service for some crime.  Indeed, recruiting officers always looked for decent men to fill their ranks as having an army of thieves would be absurd, destructive, and short-lived.  The ideal soldier was a simple country lad, somewhere between 18-26, in fairly good health.

Often times recruiting agents found new men from the lowest levels in society, however, because the unemployed, unskilled, and uneducated could find a relatively stable existence in the British army.  Since peacetime enlistments were often for life or until "worn out", a prospective soldier with no means and few options could be assured that at least in the army, he would have somewhere to live, gainful employment, and regular meals.  Literate recruits could have the chance at becoming sergeants in time if they demonstrated sufficient proficiency in the business of soldiering.  No enlisted man, however, had a reasonable expectation of becoming officers.  Still, there was the occasional phenomenon of a "gentlemen ranker", a man of some means who served as a private for a few years, usually looking to purchase into an availability in the officer corps.

The British soldier was the backbone of the empire, garrisoning posts and fighting battles from Canada to Calcutta.