“The will of the people of Gibraltar to contribute towards the defence of their home town and of their country, goes back to our forefathers.”

 
                                                                                             The Hon Major R Peliza
                                                                                             Chief Minister of Gibraltar
                                                                                             22 July 1971

The earliest verifiable historical document which provides testimony to local civilians being enrolled to defend their homeland dates to 24 June 1720. By 1755 an armed organised body of local men where mounting the picket line from Bayside to Devil’s Tower Guard in order to prevent soldiers from the garrison deserting across to the enemy.  These men where known as the Genoese Guard.  They where disbanded at the end of the seven years war.
 
During the Great Siege 1779-1783 some 160 local labourers volunteered to take part in the Great Sortie of the night of 26/27 November 1781. They were to follow the advancing troops to assist in the dismantling and demolition of the Spanish batteries, magazines and trenches. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
During the Egyptian campaign 1882-89 some 100 local men were deployed by the commissariat as transport drivers, known as Los Carreteros Del Rey (the King’s Muleteers). A hundred mules and 44 men sailed on the SS Persian Monarch in March 1882, with a second draft following them two weeks later.  The expedition was involved in several battles with the Dervishes.  During a parade held in Gibraltar the mule drivers were awarded the Egyptian War Medal with a clasp bearing the title ‘Suakin 1885’.
 
The people of Gibraltar once again volunteered to assist Great Britain during the Boer War when, in 1900, a group of Gibraltarians offered to ‘form a Local Corps of Volunteers’. The resolution was passed by the Governor to the War Office who suggested whether ‘ a proportion of the Volunteers might not advantageously be organised as a…Rifle Corps.’  Hostilities were soon ended, however, and the Corps was never formed.