19th/45th East African Rifles

The 19th/45th East African Rifles is a fictional regiment of the British Colonial Army in the BBC comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth.

In the series, Captain Edmund Blackadder states that he is a former member and participated in the famous Battle of Mboto Gorge of 1892 in Upper Volta, in which the regiment faced "10,000 Watusi Warriors, armed to the teeth with kiwi fruit and guava halves". During the battle, Captain Blackadder was able to save the life of Douglas Haig, later Field Marshal Haig, from a Watusi woman armed with a "viciously sharp piece of mango". Following the battle, instead of taking prisoners, the victors simply made a huge fruit salad. It seems that Captain Blackadder realised the highly one-sided nature of this battle- when Captain Darling asked him if he fought in "The Battle of Mboto Gorge where we [the British] massacred the peace-loving pygmies of the Upper Volta, and stole all their fruit?", Blackadder replied- "No, a completely different Mboto Gorge!".

At some point before the First World War, Captain Blackadder transferred from the 19th/45th to the same regiment as Lieutenant The Honourable George Colthurst St Barleigh (in the episode "Goodbyeee", George states that he joined the army at "the Cambridge recruiting office", which suggests that he had joined the local regiment, which would either be the Cambridgeshire Regiment or the Suffolk Regiment).