Soldiers and officers said farewell to Oxfordshire's Royal Green Jackets at a ceremony on Saturday.

The Green Jackets regiment has been renamed and rebadged as it becomes part of The Rifles, now the British army's largest infantry regiment.

The move is part of a Ministry of Defence reorganisation of the UK's armed forces and the regiment is one of four to merge.

The Rifles has also swallowed up the Devonshire and Dorset Light Infantry, the Light Infantry and the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Light Infantry.

In Oxford, the Green Jackets' Territorial Army (TA) Infantry battalion, the Royal Rifle Volunteers, rang the changes with a ceremony at its headquarters at Slade Park Barracks.

Officers and soldiers on parade were presented with new cap badges, belts and rank slides. They are one of two TA battalions now included in The Rifles, along with the Rifle Volunteers.

It is hoped the merger will bring part-time TA battalions more closely in line with the regular army.

The ceremony was led by Brigadier Nigel Mogg, honorary colonel of A Company, and attended by the Lord Mayor of Oxford, Jim Campbell, former city councillor Bill Buckingham and Davey Craig who, as a private in the 4th Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, was captured in France in the Second World War during the retreat to Dunkirk.

Brigadier Mogg said: "Those of us who have served for very many years in the Royal Green Jackets can tonight be excused for a brief moment of sadness and regret.

"The Royal Green Jackets becomes history.

"For 41 years, the Royal Green Jackets has been at the forefront as a rifle regiment, always in the thick of operations, be it Northern Ireland, Borneo, the Cold War, United Nations peacekeeping, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan."