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As a result of the ballot for precedence on the Militia roll, the Louth Militia became one of the most senior units and was designated the 5th Battalion. Although it numbered only 6 companies it appears to have been described as a regiment rather than a battalion from its earliest days. However, the Louth absorbed the small Drogheda Battalion in 1800, thereby achieving regimental status.
Lt John Shipp, an ensign who joined the Regiment in January 1816, and later wrote an autobiography recording his adventures with the 1st/87th, was greatly impressed by the Irish soldiers he encountered:
On 18 October 1914, the 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Fusiliers was still engaged in the Armentières region and once again under heavy fire. When Sergeant Jones was hit, Lance Corporal Hurst and Fusilier McAnnally dressed his wound and began carrying him to the rear. While doing so, Lance Corporal Hurst was hit in the back and sent spinning to the ground. On being examined, it was found that a bullet had passed through his pack, two coats, a shirt and cholera belt. The nose of the bullet was resting against his skin.
Amid heated political tensions, the unelected 'United Unionist Action Council' (UUAC) threatened a general strike across Northern Ireland from 3-13 May 1977 if the London (Westminster) government refused to take what the UUAC described as effective action against the IRA and reinstate the Northern Ireland government based on a system of majority rule. However, the UUAC did not have support from a number of significant work forces whose majority opposed the strike; these included both the Short's aircraft factory and the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
Major Charles Raymond Patrick Sweeny MC died on 9 May 1945 as the result of a road traffic accident. He had left the 2nd Battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles at Meerlo in January 1945 to become one of Field Marshal Montgomery's liaison officers. On 13 May 1945, by special request of the Field Marshal, a burial party of four officers, twelve men and four buglers from 2 RUR travelled to Tactical Headquarters, 21st Army Group, to assist at the funeral when Major Charles Sweeny was buried at Becklingen War Cemetery near Soltau in Niedersachsen.
Major General Sir Hugh Gough, of 87th Peninsular campaign fame, passed Mauritius in 1837 on his way to India.
A fellow passenger wrote that Gough:
'received a most wonderful ovation from his old Regiment, the fighting 87th. During the time the ship lay at Mauritius, they were in a state of wild excitement. The whole regiment followed him down to the boat and would even have followed it swimming if they had not been sternly ordered back. The headlands were lined with them, still cheering, and the last we saw of Mauritius was a bonfire with a number of their figures around it'.
The 1st Battalion The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers arrived in Singapore from Hong Kong in August 1948 for what was originally and erroneously thought to be only a few months in support of the internal security situation on the island, following the declaration of the Malayan Emergency in June 1948.
Following the Japanese invasion and occupation of Malaya in 1941, its multi-racial population suffered hardship as the Japanese disrupted the country's economic resources, mainly rubber and tin, as production was reduced to fulfil only Japan's needs. Because there was no export market, plantations were abandoned, and mines closed. The situation was exacerbated by the loss of imports of vital machine parts and of course the loss of the population's imported staple diet - rice.
Used in the Officers Mess of the 87th Foot to hold snuff, this small silver box with its little Barrosa Eagle is highly decorative but very unusual. The body of the box is made from very thin slices of the fossilised tooth of a Mammoth Elephant that has been extinct for about 10,000 years.
