[1] A formation of the 12th Royal Lancers and the Household Cavalry undertook a successful charge at the Battle of Diamond Hill in June 1900.

King George VI was instinctively biased in the favour of the Household Cavalry expressing a wish to see both regiments involved in battle and doing ceremonial duties.

"[11] Humphrey Wyndham, who was with Life Guards, told Churchill that his preference was for Household Cavalry to become tank and not machine guns.

[13] Wyndham went on: "The horse, after serving as a medium of mobility in war from the earliest times, was in process of supersession by the internal combustion engine across the valley.

[17] The 1st Household Cavalry Motor Battalion arrived at Haifa on 22 February 1941 under a new commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Reginald Heyworth.

[19] In April 1941, the 4th Cavalry Brigade, together with a battalion of infantry from the Essex Regiment, a mechanised regiment from the Arab Legion and supporting artillery was organised as Habforce for operations in Iraq as part of the response to pro-Axis Rashid Ali who had seized power in Baghdad and was besieging RAF Habbaniya.

[20] On 9 May 1941, 1st Household Cavalry Regiment were ordered to prepare to move with 2-inch mortars, Hotchkiss machine guns and, later, Bren machine-guns (much as they had been armed in 1914): the operation across the desert by was one of the most illustrious in the earlier period of the war.

Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Ferguson, the commanding officer, took the main force north, while C Squadron circled south of the city.

B Squadron had a sharp fight at Al-Khadimain, and there was a display of singular courage in the face of the enemy by Corporal of Horse Charles Maxted, who was awarded the Military Medal.

[22] Following this, in July 1941, Habforce was placed under the command of the Australian I Corps and was involved in operations against the Vichy French in Syria, advancing from eastern Iraq near the Trans-Jordan border to capture Palmyra and secure the Haditha - Tripoli oil pipeline.

[23] The operation to seize a notorious German agent, Fritz Grobba was carried out by B Squadron led by Major Eric Gooch.

On 15 July 1941 they were lauded by Winston Churchill, at a time during the war when there were few victories, for the capture of the oasis and declaration of surrender by the French regime.

The commanding officer left a report to: "give further accounts to the public ... of Syrian fighting, marked as it was by so many picturesque episodes, such as the arrival of His Majesty's Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards, in armoured cars, across many hundreds of miles of desert, to surround and capture the oasis of Palmyra.

The 1st Household Cavalry Regiment landed in Italy in April 1944 and then, after a break in the UK between October 1944 and March 1945, took part in the North West Europe Campaign.