NZ9 2nd/1st Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment, Colour Party

The 2nd/1st Battalion Colour Party composition is the same as for set (NZ8): NZ 1st Battalion. Two subalterns who bear the colours, a warrant officer and two colour sergeants. The warrant officer and sergeants wear a sash with the pattern of Maori kowhaiwhai. The ensigns colour belts differ from those of the 1st Battalion, and here the Queen's Colour is the Union flag.

The title of 2nd/1st Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (2/1RNZIR) came into being in 1974, and the battalion was to be based at Burnham Military Camp. Prior titles had been 2 New Zealand Infantry Regiment and 1 Battalion Depot. The battalion's lineage can be traced back to the many Volunteer units, and Territorial Regiments of yesteryear, whose feats are recorded on the Regimental Colour. The twenty-one battle honours emblazoned on the colour are:

After World War Two the New Zealand Army was committed to operations in South East Asia. A primary function of the Burnham Camp became the receiving and training of reinforcements for the 1st Battalion serving from 1958 in Malaya, Borneo and Sarawak. In 1959 the battalion marched through Wellington before embarking for Penang to relieve the 1st along the Malaya-Thailand border. Later from 1967 men would serve in the nine companies deployed in South Vietnam.

Since then battalion personnel have had peacekeeping roles in the Sinai, Angola, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Cambodia, Mogadishu, Bougainville and Sierra Leone.

In 1994 a company rotated with the 1st Battalion company in Bosnia Herzegovina, and in 2001 the Battalion rotated with the 1st Battalion in East Timor on both occasions for United Nations peacekeeping duties.