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The first female soldier of The Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) to be killed by the IRA was Private Eva Martin, aged 28, from Lisbellaw, County Fermanagh. She died during the attack on the Deanery base of C Company, 6th Battalion The Ulster Defence Regiment, in Clogher, County Tyrone.
The British South Africa Company (BSAC) had a Royal Charter granted in 1890 by the British government, modelled on the old East India Company, to pursue an economic and physical colonisation of southern and central Africa during the 'Scramble for Africa'. Cecil Rhodes was a director, as was the Chairman of the company, James Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Abercorn of Baronscourt, County Fermanagh.
The first recorded deployment of Women's Ulster Defence Regiment personnel, or 'Greenfinches', on operations was in the 10th Battalion The Ulster Defence Regiment on the night of 28 October 1973. Four Greenfinches from C Company at Girdwood took part in the 10 UDR mobile patrol. The regular operational employment of Greenfinches began on 5 November 1973.
Sergeant Robert James Irvine was the Motor Transport (MT) Sergeant of the 9th Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment.
Sergeant Irvine was murdered when he was off-duty and walking from an annexe to the main house where his family were living in Rasharkin, at around 2100 hours on 20 October 1992. He had no warning and no chance to defend himself. A terrorist gunman fired ten rounds at him from a range of just over 20 metres and he was killed instantly. His wife and two children were inside the house at the time of his murder.
Corporal E Thomas of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards pulled the trigger to fire the first shot by the British Expeditionary Force just north of Mons, Belgium at around 0700 hours on 22 August 1914.
Four battalions hold their first annual training camps in Ballykinlar and Magilligan.
*The exact date of this event is not known although it is known to have occurred between June and July 1970.
The first two men enlisting in The Ulster Defence Regiment were sworn in on 18 February 1970. One was a 19-year old Roman Catholic and the other a 47-year old Protestant. Roman Catholic members of the UDR would be subjected to intimidation following 'Internment' in August 1971, resulting in many resigning and dissuading potential recruits from joining.
Internment in Northern Ireland was the arrest and detention, under the authority of the Special Powers Act, of targeted Irish republicans. The first of some 450 arrests began as the Regular Army launched Operation DEMETRIUS in the early hours of 9 August 1971. The introduction of internment was accompanied by a predictable state of civil unrest.
A constant need of trench warfare in the First World War was to know what your enemy was doing. On the Western Front, the British organised regular raids of the German trenches to find out information such as what and how many troops were in the area and what weapons they had. Most of these raids happened at night and as silently as possible. Small but vicious daggers like this were invaluable in the hand to hand fighting that happened in the narrow confines of the trenches.
The retired General Sir Hubert Gough, who had commanded the Fifth Army during the First World War, drew the British public's attention to the contribution made by Ireland's citizens in the current British war effort with his letter to The Times of London on 26 September 1941. He wrote that 'very large numbers of Irishmen have joined H.M. Forces since the outbreak of war'.
