Of all the British regiments that helped to make wartime history in New Zealand, none saw so much service as the 65th, known popularly as the Royal Bengal Tigers, because of their long association with India, and their valorous work there. A striped tiger was their badge. The old system of numbers has been abolished and the corps is now the 1st Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment. From first to last, it served for twenty years in this country; the first detachments came from Sydney in 1846 to take a hand in Wellington's little war. By the time the Taranaki and Waikato wars began the 65th was a well-seasoned regiment. The Maoris had a great respect and liking for the veterans of the “Hiketi-Pift,” and the soldiers, for their part, thought a great deal of their tattooed opponents, truly warriors worthy of their steel. The 65th ranks at the time of this story were more Irish than English; this preponderance of Irishmen was the condition in numerous British regiments. The Irishman, while hating the English heartily, hated still more to miss any fighting anywhere, and the easiest way to get into the devil's own row was to join the Army.

Among the Englishmen in this Anglo-Celtic regiment was a young officer named Henry Stretton Bates, of a wealthy South of England family. He came out with new drafts for the battalion in New Zealand in the middle fifties, and he immediately took a great liking to the Maori people, and addressed himself so well to the study of the language that by 1860-61 he could speak it well; presently he was appointed an interpreter on the General's staff. He married in Wellington a chieftainess of the Atiawa tribe.

In 1860 Lieutenant Bates was serving with his regiment in Taranaki. He made sketches of various events in the Waitara campaign, and among these were water colours of scenes in General Pratt's extraordinarily long sap towards Te Arei Pa. This slow and cautious approach, at the rate of a mile a month, and the construction of redoubts every few hundred yards along the Kairau-Huirangi plain towards the Maori stronghold, was regarded as a huge joke by many of the combatants on both sides. It was varied by some sharp fighting, and the most dramatic and fierce incident in the year's work was the Maori attack on No. 3 Redoubt, between Kairau and Huirangi.