As Charles Carrington recounts (p. 214) in 1894, on holiday in Bermuda, Kipling chanced to meet a sergeant in the Royal Berkshire Regiment who carried him off to the sergeant’s mess. This enabled Kipling to hear at first hand of the terrible Battle of Maiwand, fourteen years before, during the Second Afghan War, when a wing of the regiment had been wiped out. Soon after, he wrote the grim ballad “That Day”.
This book by Richard J. Stacpoole-Ryding tells the story of this fine Victorian Regiment. Copies can be ordered from this website. It is also available via Amazon,