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The following is the text from Army Form W.3121, Recommendation for Award, describing the date, place and action for which 7043579 Corporal Thomas James McMullan was recommended for an award by the Commanding Officer of the 2nd battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles, Lieutenant Colonel J Drummond, on 7 July 1945 and forwarded through the chain of command until approved when Corporal McMullan was awarded the Military Medal (MM).
By 1300 hours on 14 November 1944, a cold and stormy day, the 2nd Battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles had completed the relief of the 1st Battalion The King's Own Scottish Borderers in a position just to the west of the River Meuse at Smakt in Holland. On the other side of the Meuse lay the German border.
Described as an archetypal Ulsterman, Brigadier M N S McCord CBE MC is remembered as an energetic, resourceful and brave leader and soldier.
Below, a German Army machine gun team firing a variant of the MG 08 on the Western Front:
(Image © IWM (Q 87923))
To listen to the rate of fire of an MG 08/15, click on the sound button below:
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The Army in Ireland, up to the 1790s, had been tasked with defending against invasion and maintaining the King's Peace. This had been achieved by a small number of regiments stationed across Ireland, but in the early 1790s, the ideology of the French Revolution found favour with diverse factions in Ireland as civil unrest grew. War in Europe loomed and military preparations were made before the inevitable declaration of war by Republican France against Great Britain on 1 February 1793.
The 1st Battalion The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers relieved the South Wales Borderers in the line at Cape Helles, Gallipoli on 24 November 1915.
For the next four days, before being relieved by the King's Own Scottish Borderers, the routine would include, apart from the usual 'stand-to' at first and last light, improvements to defensive works. Bombardment shelters, machine-gun positions and listening posts were improved and a new kitchen was constructed. Offensive action included using trench catapults to fire 136 grenades to demolish a section of Turkish trench parapets.
At noon on 26 May 1940, in the main square of the Belgian town of Tourcoing, the GOC 3rd Infantry Division, Major General B L Montgomery, decorated the Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles (2 RUR), Lieutenant Colonel Knox*, with the DSO; Lieutenant Garstin with the MC; and Serjeants Henderson, Baudains, Kiely and Corporal Martin with the MM.
(Major Blake had been General Steele's personal staff officer, titled 'Military Assistant' (MA), for a number of years.)
From 11 January 1938, the 2nd Battalion The Royal Irish Fusiliers had been stationed in Malta and the nearby island of Gozo. After the start of the Second World War, here too the Royal Irish Fusiliers (Faughs) experienced a phoney war and were free to spend months building up the island’s defences.
