Talk:British Colonial Auxiliary Forces

Misnomer

• The title of this article British Colonial Auxiliary Forces is not correct. The connotation of "Forces" needs to be laid out at the start as it is not interchangeable with "unit", "corps", or "regiment". More importantly, in the British military (ie, those parts of the British Armed Forces, prior to the addition of the Royal Air Force, that are parts of the land forces...aviation, when introduced, was split between naval aviation (Royal Naval Air Service) and military aviation (Royal Flying Corps). The Royal Air Force amalgamated both and had, 'til the Second World War, sole responsibility for all naval and military aviation, as well as strategic airpower, which would most fairly have been considered military aviation. With the formation of the Fleet Air Arm of the royal Navy, the Royal Air force retained the overwater role of Coastal Command, making it a sticky wicket factoring the RAF into the dichotomy of the British Armed Forces into naval or military forces, but when considering periods prior to 1918 that is not an issue), the British Army was only one of several military forces. The British Army and Ordnance Military Corps were both Regular Forces, but the various Reserve Forces (ie, Militia force, or Constitutional Force, Yeomanry Force, Volunteer Force, though there were others such as the Fencibles) were not parts of the British Army and those in the British Isles only became so when the War Office took over their control and funding from local authorities (about 1870). After the 1850s formation of the Regular Reserve of the British Army, they had been generally referred to as "local forces" (as members were recruited for home defence purposes only) or "auxiliary forces" (as auxiliary to, but not part of, the Regular Force, as the British Army became after absorbing the Ordnance Military corps and various previously civilian Board of Ordnance departments in 1855) to avoid confusion. Even after the War Office began funding them and integrating their units with regular corps and regiments, they remained nominally separate forces from the army though the entire forces were added to the British Army order of precedence. In the colonies, the same rule applied as to whether a unit, or even a force, was considered part of the British Army or a separate British military unit or force auxiliary to the British Army but not part of it: whether it was wholly or partly funded from Army Funds controlled by the War Office. Whether the unit was raised in a colony, was raised under colonial Act or regulations, was restricted to service in a colony, or recruited only whites, "non-Europeans", or both made no difference to whether a unit was considered part of the British Army or not. In regard to the last point, units on this list, notably including those of the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda (Bermuda Militia Artillery, Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps, Bermuda Volunteer Engineers, and Bermuda Militia Infantry, were all raised from their outsets as parts of the British Army, funded by the War Office, as is obvious from their placements in the British Army order of precedence and their officers being included with the rest of those of the British Army in the Army Lists. The title of this article should either be revised to British Colonial Forces (better British Colonial Forces and Units), or those units which were parts of the British Army, rather than auxiliaries to it, should be removed.Aodhdubh (talk) 13:24, 19 February 2022 (UTC)