Delhi Spearmen

The 9th Lancer's nickname is the Delhi Spearmen. The 9th Lancer’s earlier history was an officer’s wife having her unborn child ripped from her womb. The story was retold to instil a sense of revenge in the men. The men would train using a knife in both left and right hand.
Battles won and lost. Wars won. An officer’s wife got a bit stuck up. - nothing new there - on the point of a butcher’s knife. An Afghan ripped her up. Mrs Chambers, was pregnant; her unborn child was ripped from her womb by a local butcher. The other, a Mrs Dawson, was recovering from smallpox; to avoid contagion, the mob threw burning torches at her until her clothes caught fire and burnt her to death. The British left the room untouched, and filled in the well where they’d tossed the baby, only partially, so that they would stand as terrible reminders to new troops from England that their duty must be sustained by a desire for revenge. One soldier, his head full of tales of atrocities, reported: “I seed two Moors talking in a cart. Presently I heard one of ‘em say ‘Cawnpore.’ I knowed what that meant; so I fetched Tom Walker, and he heard ‘em say ‘Cawnpore,’ and he knowed what that meant. So we polished ‘em.” Bastards. But you couldn’t help but admire their tenacity. When their turn came to fight in Afghanistan, they had something to live up to. They fought alright. He still had the knife.