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The 36th (Ulster) Division moved into the Front Line for the first time on 7 February 1916 with Divisional Headquarters located at Acheux and its boundaries between the River Ancre and the Mailly-Maillet-Serre Road. Over the next three weeks there was little to report, apart from the harsh weather and the state of the trenches.
The following is the text from Army Form W.3121 describing the date, place and action for which P/285850 W/Lieutenant Sydney Marshall Lennox was recommended for an award by the Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles, Lieutenant Colonel I C Harris, in June 1944 and forwarded through the chain of command for approval.
The Italian garrison in Leros was strengthened by British forces on 15 September 1943. The 2nd Battalion The Royal Irish Fusiliers arrived from Malta on 29 September 1943. Initially, the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Maurice French, had proposed a defence plan for holding the island by securing the high ground of the island's interior. When Brigadier Robert Tilney arrived on 5 Novemnber to assume command of the by then 3,000 strong force, his preference was for a forward defence on the coastline.
Lieutenant Colonel G B Laurie was the Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Rifles and he wrote a letter almost every day until he was killed in action at Neuve Chapelle on 12 March 1915. The following is an extract from a letter dated 26 November 1914 and provides a description of life in the trenches.
The universal expectation that the war would end sooner rather than later was reflected in a letter written to his wife on 26 January 1915, by the Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Rifles. His battalion was out of the line in billets.
Although Major John Doyle had begun to advertise in a Dublin newspaper for recruits for his regiment of foot in early September 1793, he did not actually receive authority to do so until the Secretary-at-War sent him a Letter of Service dated 18 September 1793. The contents of the letter are interesting as details dictate structure, terms of service, ranks and manning, and limits on heights and ages:
_**Sir,
Just before the Second World War began on 3 September 1939, the 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Fusiliers was stationed on Guernsey in the Channel Islands. When orders forced a hurried move to England and then France, it was decided to leave the Regimental Silver in the vault of the Lloyds Bank in Guernsey.
The speech, which was given more or less off-the-cuff to the 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment (1 R IRISH) Battle Group on 19 March 2003, several days before crossing the Iraq border on Operation TELIC, became famous worldwide. It was recorded in shorthand by Sarah Oliver, a Mail on Sunday journalist. No voice or video recording of it exists and it is Sarah Oliver's version of the speech which has been written into history.
In the summer of 1944, British manpower shortages had led to the disbandment of the 6th Battalion The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, a battalion that had fought with great distinction as part of 38 (Irish) Brigade. Some 320 men were assigned to the Inniskillings’ 2nd Battalion and the 2nd Inniskillings then became part of 38 (Irish) Brigade in July that year. During the last months of the Second World War, the 2nd Inniskillings fought from Taranto in the south, up the entire length of Italy, across the Alps and deep into Austria where the Battalion formed part of the Allied occupying garrison.
Colonel Fitch (founder of the 83rd Regiment of Foot) had placed Captain Legh, one Sergeant, two Corporals and thirty Privates of the 83rd Regiment in a small pallisaded enclosure guarding a ravine. Captain Legh reported he was under heavy fire from the Maroons from some heights and wished permission to go forward to seize the high ground and hold it. On 12 September 1795 Colonel Fitch, attended by Lieutenant Brunt, Adjutant of the 83rd, and several other officers and men, went forward to Captain Legh's post.
